


the honor among thieves

by laadylazarus



Category: DC Extended Universe, Suicide Squad (2016)
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Abusive Behavior, Alternate Universe- Canon Divergence, Angst, Antiheroes, Antivillains, Canon Expansion, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Codependency, Explicit Language, F/M, Family, Fire-Forged Friendship, Humor, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced miscarriage, Magic, Manipulation, Mental Illness, Metahumans, Multiple Pov, Mythology - Freeform, Obsession, Sexual Themes, Suicidal Thoughts, Team Bonding, Unhealthy Relationships, Villains, Witchcraft, references to past abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2017-05-31
Packaged: 2018-08-15 21:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 87,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8072644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laadylazarus/pseuds/laadylazarus
Summary: A U.S. intelligence officer conscripts a group of incarcerated supervillains into a task force far more sinister in purpose than it appears.An archaeologist wrestles for control from an ancient evil that has stolen her body.A witch attempts to become a god with the help of a powerful being from beyond the stars.A samurai and a soldier contemplate their own morality.A group of vagabonds finds belonging, freedom, understanding and redemption (or lack thereof) on their ill-fated mission.A madman launches a desperate mission to regain the only thing he loves.Or, an expansion and slight re-imagining of "Suicide Squad."





	1. take me six feet under

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to start this off by saying that I liked Suicide Squad.  
> I like it for everything it is and isn't, for the same reasons I'm relieved by everything it is and isn't, and the same reasons I'm disappointed by everything it is and isn't. This movie got me into DC, comics, these characters, and carried me through some pretty rough months. Despite it's many flaws and shortcomings, I'll always be grateful to it for doing so.  
> This movie got far more hate than it deserved, and though it had a lot of problems, it had a lot of potential too. It was enjoyable despite it's shortcomings, and I do genuinely believe that it could have been great if more time had been given to it's development and production.  
> But yes, there were plenty of flaws, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I'll spend a lot of time filling in plot holes. Some motivations, backstories, relationships and roles in this work will diverge from canon to suit the work at large, though the overall story will remain the same. Including some things that'll likely be controversial.  
> But for every flaw, there's something good that I won't be altering. Instead, I'll attempt to reach the potential already present in the film. I'll expand on canon motivations, backstories, relationships and plot points because they deserve far more attention than many of them received. Again, these things will likely be controversial as well.  
> Before we begin, I'd just like to make this clear: I'm not looking to profit off of this. I'm also not a professional writer. This is going to be far from perfect and it's going to take a very long time to complete, if I even complete it at all. Updates will be irregular at best, and there's a very strong possibility that they'll stop coming altogether. There are going to be chapters that drag. My own personal opinions play heavily into the development of the characters, and the relationships that do and do not appear. You're welcome to disagree, but please keep in mind that I am writing this, first and foremost, for myself. And, given the scale of this work and the amount of effort put into it, it will probably not be completed.  
> I just hope whoever's reading this will keep an open mind, and enjoy the ride.

The first time she sees the mountain’s crumbling face, and it’s gaping mouth, Dr. June Moone grins with thrilling certainty. She’s on the brink of something big.

Her expedition marches on through the dense Peruvian undergrowth, and excited chatter ripples back and forth down the line of scientists.

 _Her_ expedition. This is _her_ expedition. This is her first time out of the country, her first big trip, and _she’s_ the one with the grant that enabled their presence here in the highlands.

Her chest swells with pride at this. Finally, she's being taken _seriously_.

June isn’t without her self-awareness, though. She knows this expedition comes with a great deal of risk, and a strong chance of failure.

If she’s wrong _(And she’s not,_ she can feel it in her bones), she’s not only bankrupt, but a laughingstock in the scientific community that still looks at her with a mixture of begrudging awe and patronizing eagerness. Her earlier findings would be regarded as nothing more than a passing fad, a comet burning bright and fast before it disappears into mundanity, even though the archaeological community had been full of praise for them when she’d first published them months before. The University of Metropolis would likely not fund anything with her name attached for close to a decade. 

But she isn’t. They’ll see.

She hadn’t spent nearly a year of her time begging and fundraising and campaigning to fail the Board, not when she’s their child prodigy, their girl genius.

She hadn’t started college when she should have been getting her driver’s license, and she certainly hadn’t spent close to a decade buried in books and musty manuscripts to blow her first big shot.

She hadn’t buried most of her trust fund in this expedition to come home with nothing. She hadn't called her parents (of all people) when she’d landed the grant just to fail.

Besides, the universe itself seems to be in her favor.

The hike to the Tres Osos Caves is strangely easy. The mist has retreated above the treetops, the rain has completely cleared away, and the emerald sea of lush undergrowth practically parts for them as they make their descent into the Callejón de Huaylas Valley. They stumble across the site rather than trek to it, and camp is made with practically no difficulties.

It’s a welcome reprieve from the hellish eight-hour drive into the mountains, and the two days they spent navigating the forest. Too easy.

 _No_ , June’s rational mind thinks _, it’s only natural that it’s easy._ _The valley’s a tourist destination. This cave has been explored before. Of course there’s a path. We just took the longest route there, because we all suck at following directions._

Still, she wonders.

 

* * *

 

As usual, when everyone eats, she sits apart, not that she particularly minds. Of the twelve people on the expedition, she is the youngest by far. The closest person to her age, a man named Luis who is one of their guides, is ten years her senior. Even if they were closer in age, she’d never bridge the gap herself.

June can speak fluent English, Spanish and Latin, and yet whenever she goes to offer a comment to one of their conversations, to snap irritably when someone addresses her as “June” or “Miss Moone” or even “Moony Juney” (Christ, were they in the _third grade?)_ when she’s been a doctor for a year, she can feel it wither and die in her throat.

Perhaps it has something to do with her lack of friends as a child. Being the perpetually-anxious, academically gifted daughter of two strict shut-ins hadn’t exactly helped her develop any social skills.

But it doesn’t matter, she tells herself when the loneliness wells up. She has her work.

The irrational part of June’s brain flares up again, telling her this is destiny. This was meant to be. Her life is about to begin. Once this is over and done with, she’ll have their respect. Their adoration, even. She’ll find something greater than she’d ever dreamed of. She’ll be just like Indiana Jones (Only, without all the artifact destruction). And then, once she’s made her name, she’ll find the courage to talk to them.

Once she’s made her name, they’ll call her Dr. Moone with no difficulty, scoot over to offer her a place in their circle, and listen to her shaky words without constantly casting each other chagrined glances when they think she’s not looking.

Until then, she’ll settle for listening quietly, as Manuel and Luis regale the doctors with stories about Inti, the Incan sun god, and the mountain gods that are rumored to still lurk somewhere in the foothills.

 

* * *

 

Long after everyone else has fallen asleep, June lays awake, staring at the tarp, listening to the chorus of Peruvian nightcrawlers, wondering about the mountain gods, and how their stories had come to be. She contemplates long and hard, knowing that if she closes her eyes, the strange lucid dreams that have plagued her since she’d arrived in Peru will take hold.

She can never understand what they’re of, since the subjects of her dreams always evaporate the moment she awakens. The contents of her dreams don’t matter, though, only how they leave her. Glassy-eyed, head clouded with fog, wandering around her room, wondering what’s real.

An effect of homesickness, she decided when she’d first woke drowning in her own sweat, heart pounding in her ears. And she’d looked into them no further. She hadn’t had such horrific night terrors since she’d been a child. June wasn’t going to relive the experience any more than she had to.

Instead of wrestling with her subconscious, she stays awake until the first curls of amber morning peer over the snow-capped mountains, pouring over her maps and diagrams and geological surveys again and again, though she’s had them memorized for months.

 _Just in case,_ she thinks.

 

* * *

 

She schools her face into a calm, blank stare during breakfast, and keeps her voice level, if quiet. She can’t afford to look more like the baby of the group than she is. This is _her_ expedition. They’re here to prove her theory. Ancient coastal foragers who’d taken a road trip deep into the mountains to support a growing society. An entire proto-people waiting for her to prove they exist.

Though her fingers tremble as she’s pulling her sun-bleached hair back into a ponytail, she knows it isn’t fatigue, and it can’t be nerves.

She’s not afraid at all.

Not as she first slips into the cave’s ancient hungry mouth, and crawls past the dull stone teeth that guard it.

Not as her headlamp beam streaks across the walls and bounce off of stalactites, casting inky shadows and giving them the appearance of the rotting, jagged teeth of an ancient monster.

Not as she descends the gradually widening chute and stares down into the opening. It yawns open before her, and the darkness dilates like a giant’s eye, but she brushes the allusion aside as she slips further down the rope, rotating in open space.

She’s come too far to stop now.

They land safely in the belly of the beast, and June gasps in awe when she unhooks herself from the line and steps out into the cave.

She breathes in the musty, dank air, and her heart hums in excitement.

Just over seven-hundred-fifty feet from floor to ceiling, the chamber is massive, and it’s floor is ringed with winding stalagmites like the teeth of a comb. The distant ceiling, covered in sharp stalactites, is held up by glimmering limestone columns, and the floor is abnormally level. Perfect for the equipment left down here by the expedition before hers.

Her team spreads out, unpacking their gear and switching on lamps, and she unburdens herself of a heavy pack containing dozens of delicate instruments.

June examines the map once more, and orients herself to the cave’s geography.

 _Now where_...

 _There_ , at the end of the tunnel stretching just under two miles to the south, is the practically-untouched Central Chamber. All that’s really known about it is that it’s smaller than the Northern Chamber, the floor is completely covered in debris, and it has yet to be fully explored.

That’s one of her goals for this expedition, all written out in neat green pen in her planner.

 

_1.  Map out inside of the Central Chamber. (They’re just bones, they can’t hurt you)_

_2. Complete the exploration of the Tres Osos Caves (Or, if they’re a lot bigger than we thought, at least give it a try)._

_3\. Find support for theory re: Pac. littoral settlements road trip to Andes._

_4.  Find Agavaceae/Bromeliaceae (sp?) plant-fiber-processing tech. artifacts._

_5\. Find something more important than fricking cave bear skeletons._

_6\. (Optional) Get everyone to call you Dr. Moone. Not June. Not Moony Juney. You are a mature adult. Make them see that._

_7\. (Optional) Get the whole cave complex renamed._

_8\. Buy stuffed llama at airport kiosk to treat self for revolutionary archaeological breakthrough._

 

Tres Osos Caves. Named for the three cave bears discovered in the Northern Chamber when it was first explored a few years ago. The fully intact specimens had long been removed, but she can see the markers on the uneven stone floor where they’d once been. The team had also discovered primitive arrowheads and tools, but the bears were considered far more remarkable, so the naming of the caves had gone to them.

That fact had privately pissed June off, because in her humble opinion, the discovery of people having lived in the cave was far more important. Said discovery is the reason why she’s even here. An entire population had been using this cave as a base camp for a far larger and more complex society (In theory. For now), and all everyone cares about is a bunch of dead bears? Who were these people? What happened to them?

Hopefully, her discovery will be important enough to warrant the naming of at least a corner of this cave. Or she'll at least get the chambers renamed. Granted, Ancient Plant-Fiber-Processing Technology Cave just doesn’t have a good ring to it. Even though that’s precisely what she’s here to find, something tells her they’ll find something far more interesting.

 _Really, ‘North Chamber’?_ _North of what?_

_And Central Chamber? Half the fricking time in all these different papers, they call it the Middle Chamber. Why couldn’t they make up their minds? And what’s it even in the middle of? There’s only the two._

“June Moone.”

June perks her head up, glancing around to see who’d called her.

But no one’s there.

She’s alone in the Central Chamber, ankle-deep in the bones of thousands of small animals that had met their miserable deaths long before the first human cities were built. The dome-shaped ceiling towers above her like a prehistoric cathedral, and the chandelier-like stalactite formations gleam under her probing beam.

That’s odd. She has no memory of walking this far in. Where _is_ everyone?

“Hello?” She calls hoarsely, flinching as her voice gathers at the edges of the cavern and rolls back onto itself. June likens the acoustics to being on the inside of a massive violin.

“You know, we’re _supposed_ to have a buddy system!”

“June.” A woman’s whisper, from deep in the chamber, alluring and sweet and strangely clear. Probably one of her fellow doctors.

_It’s Dr. Moone. Has been for a year. Get. It. Right._

“What is it? Did you find something?” June follows, her footsteps crackling over scattered bone.

“June!” The voice is clearer than it’s ever been, but she can’t see anyone. The ground shifts beneath her feet, and she sinks to her shins in loose pebbles and animal bones.

“June Moone!”

The voice is coming from below her, drifting up from beneath the earth.

At once, June realizes she’s made a terrible mistake.

The bones shift like quicksand beneath her, and the ground collapses under her.

June comes to a sudden and painful stop as her chest is caught by the sides of the hole, grating into her with sharp stony teeth.

She gasps as the breath is kneaded from her lungs, swinging her legs wildly for purchase, but finding none beneath her. The ground could be anywhere between a foot and a mile below her, and _this can’t happen to her_.

She breathes sharp staccato breaths, and lets her legs go limp. _Stay calm, June_. _No use in disturbing the stone further_. She feels the skin of her elbows split open as she grips the crumbling stone with them, and hisses through clenched teeth.

June scrambles for the red length of rope spilling from her belt and out of the hole. If she could just tie it to something, she would be safe. She could climb out.

And there- a stalagmite.  June draws the rope closer in her hands and tightens her grip on it. _I can do this. I can do this. I’ll be fine._

But then the sifting rock beneath her collapses, and she tumbles into absolute darkness.

 

* * *

 

The sensation of something heavy and warm sitting on her chest is what awakens her.

June blinks, moving her hands over her chest to dislodge whatever’s pressing on her, and her vision swims before her. It feels as though a cloud of tiny black flies are swarming in her head.

The heaviness is likely just the oppressive heat that fills the cavern. Humidity so thick she could cut it with her knife, heat so tangible she could reach out and grasp it. June’s entire body is coated in sweat, and her hair is limp and sticking to her neck and shoulders. Her armpits and bandanna are soaked, and her body is covered in grainy black mud.

Mud. There’s water down here somewhere. Worst comes to worst, she can last a few days.

June forces herself to her ruined elbows, wincing at the little bones and pebbles pressing into her back and legs, irritating her wounds, and gags at the rancid air that fills her lungs.

The overpowering stench of ripped bone and rot assaults her senses. It’s thick and sticky, clinging to the inside of her mouth and nose like slime. She feels vomit begin to rise in her throat. 

June rushes to take long, sharp breaths through her mouth, crinkling her mud-streaked face in disgust. _It’s just a smell_. _It’s not that bad. It’s… Oh my God, it’s awful. But it won’t kill you._

She sighs, and feels at her aching body, checking to see if anything had been broken in the fall, and then smiles in relief.

Miraculously, there’s nothing. Nothing but a dull throbbing pain that’s likely nothing worse than extensive bruising, and her elbows are only shredded at a superficial level. June is fairly certain that the only serious injury she sustained is a concussion. As long as she’s careful, she’ll be okay.

June reaches up to examine her helmet, then starts when she realizes her headlamp is gone.

She glances around, wondering where the blue-tinted light is coming from, and sees that her lamp must have broken off and gone rolling away, deeper into the chamber.

The chamber. The ragged chute June had fallen through is likely no more than a few meters in depth. She can even see the light streaming in from the Central Chamber above her. It’s reassuring. She could probably climb out of it, as long as the rock stays put. Her rope is right here, to her right, all coiled in a pile next to her. And if she can’t find a way out, someone will come find her eventually, and they’ll be close enough to hear her call out. 

She’ll be just fine. She just needs to stay calm and patient. She doesn’t even want to scream for help just yet.

There’s something she needs to do. Something important. But she doesn’t quite know yet what it is. She needs to _focus_. Maybe there’s more to this new chamber.

_She’s discovered a new chamber._

June examines her surroundings carefully, and notes that the chamber’s floor slopes downward, and is vaguely arrowhead-shaped, with one end coming to a sharp point, with a shallow hole in it. The other end is relatively flattened and at the lowest point. The two ends are connected by curving walls covered in strange bubble-like rock formations.

No, not rock formations.

Skulls.

Hundreds of skulls, human and long-extinct animal, stacked in neat ceiling-high rows around the perimeter of the chamber.

The Skull Chamber, she decides. Not the South Chamber, or the Bottom Chamber, or whatever boring name they’ll come up with. She’ll fight for this one with a strongly-worded letter.

June draws in a sharp breath, and gasps in delight. Her heart flutters.

Here. Right _here_. Proof. Tangible proof. There _had_ been people here once, long ago, and they hadn’t just passed through these caves, they’d _lived_ in them. She’s right. Her career is made.

 _Lara Croft, eat your heart out_.

June rises shakily to her feet, scoops up her headlamp, and slips deeper into the chamber, boots squelching in the slimy black mud underfoot.

But something doesn't feel right. 

A pressure is building on the inside of her skull, a strange dark fog that gathers at the edge of her brain and presses outward, roaring like the inside of a conch shell, coloring her vision soft and fuzzy. She _knew_ it had been a mistake to leave her glasses at base camp. Her contacts must have torn.

 _It’s your concussion_. _Stay focused_ , she tells herself as she treads on, blinking rapidly to stabilize her vision.

 _No,_ says a little voice in the back of her mind, the anxious flighty chirping bird that always forces her to second-guess every little thing she does. _Stop. Turn around. Scream for help. Get out of the cave. You shouldn’t be here._

But it’s buried under a layer of dense, foggy heat, the kind of heat that makes her drowsy, makes her want to strip off all of her spelunking gear, peel off her sweaty clothes and roll around in the mud, rubbing it deep into her skin.

She swells in indignation. Of _course_ she should be here. This is _her_ expedition. _Her_ discovery. _Her_ destiny. If she had not ignored that feeling deep in her bones, the reverberating desire to spread her wings and _flee_ , she would not be here.

Besides, she doesn't think she can turn around, even if she wants to. There's something behind her that she shouldn't see. Something in the hole.

June walks along the walls of the chamber, and with each step, a pressing urgency rings stronger and stronger in her mind like an alarm bell, and her muscles coil with electricity.

There’s something she has to find.

Something that’s rightfully _hers_.

And she has to find it quickly, before _they_ take it from her.

But what _-oh_.

There, right _there_ , tucked in a nook of the cavern’s wide end, a stone object carved out of the wall itself, an almost throne-like shape, cast half in the watery turquoise light streaming in from above, and half in the inky greenish shadows. Perched at it's top is the largest cave bear skull she’s ever seen, a strange swooping crest roughly etched out of stone adorning its forehead. In its lap, an intricately carved skull with the same symbol balanced on its crown. In its outstretched eroded paws, two strange idols sculpted of fired clay with care far greater than the rest of the altar.

An altar.

It’s an altar. She doesn’t know how she knows that's what it is, but the absolute certainty is welcome.

She has to get to it _now_ , before she runs out of time.

June picks up her pace, skidding down the slippery slope to the altar, and even the clouds in her mind can’t disrupt the wheels in her head from turning as she examines the idols in excitement.

One tall and lean, one shorter with curved hips and breasts. Male and female figures. One in the light, one in the dark.

Male, with a headdress that makes her think of the Inca- _is this where they’d drawn their inspiration?_

Female, with the crescent motif repeated on her forehead. _Is she the one being worshiped here? No, she’s on the same level as the male, so they're equally important._

Both with jade beads for eyes, _but jade isn’t native to Peru_.

These people, whoever they’d been, they’d had much larger trade routes than she’d theorized, if they’d been able to get jade from Central America or even further north.

They’d had their own written _language_ , if she’s reading the carvings on the idols’ bodies right. And if that’s true, and the dates all line up, this mystery script might predate _Sumerian_. These people might have _invented_ the written word.

They’d had their own _pantheon_. This altar must be a place of worship. Are these figures the predecessors to the Incan Inti? The mountain gods?

June reaches out to the shorter idol, and pauses. There’s a hairline fracture along it’s neck, coated in wax _\- wax, oh my God! They knew how to seal things with wax!-_ and something grainy and black seems to be seeping from it. She frowns.

Idol? No.

It’s an urn.

Her fingertips tingle, like her nails are going to shoot out of her hands.

She moves to withdraw her hand, but she finds she cannot move.

She can’t step backwards, can’t turn her head away.

She doesn’t want to.

 _Unprofessional_ , the shrill little bird chirps from behind the fog, _put it down_ _, get out of here now!_

But she doesn’t care.

She reaches out and grasps it, lifting it from it’s perch, and running her fingers along the slight crack in it’s seal.

The weight in her head takes the shape of spiderlike fingers pressing from within her brain, fingertips squeezing at the inside of her skull, leaving searing blots of pain in her vision.

June grits her teeth, screws her eyes shut, and gasps. She finds herself wanting those fingers to just split her skull open, to relieve her of the _pressure_. Dimly, she can hear her own heartbeat, skittish and too quick, rising in her temples and beating at them like the feet of an anxious rabbit.

 _June Moone_.

The voice, from just over her shoulder, but echoing on the inside of her head.

As June's fingers trace the seal on the urn’s neck, she trembles. She feels the sharp, slimy edge of ragged yellow teeth tracing along her own neck, rising up to whisper with hot, stinky, rasping breath in her ear.

 _Open it_.

Open it. Open it and she’ll be set for life. The secret to these people is _right here_ in her hands, and she just needs to-

 _CRACK_.

June blinks.

The head is in her palm, and suddenly, the urn feels hollow.

She opened it.

 _Oh_ , _God_. _What did I do?_

Wisps of black vaporous smoke slither from the urn like a nest of worms, crawling up her arm, and June gasps, dropping it like it’s suddenly white-hot.

She falls onto her backside, and scrambles up the incline, shaking the strange writhing tendrils from her arms.

They vanish into the darkness, and June’s suddenly aware of a feral, animal presence lurking behind her.

She isn't alone.

June turns, clenching her trembling fists.

A black shadow shuffles out of a hole in the cave’s far side.

Her first instinct is to cry out, because she isn't alone. Because someone is trapped down here with her, someone who might have been alone and starving in the dark for weeks, someone who is weak, who needs her help.

But her call dies as soon as it leaves her throat, cracking into a froglike croak that rolls along the skull-covered walls and back around to her.

_No._

No, it's not some _one,_ it's some _thing._

Something shaped vaguely like a woman her age, maybe a bit younger, with a curtain of feral jet-black hair falling over her emaciated body. She’s hardly more than a skeleton with thin, papery, ashen flesh hanging loosely over her frame. She lurches towards June with swaying snakelike movements, limbs popping and cracking as its bones and sinews grind against each other. There’s something terribly wrong with her face, but June doesn’t know- _doesn’t want to know_ \- what it is.

She can hear the clinking of chains and beads throughout the cave as the shape flickers like firelight, and vanishes. Then, with a sharp _pop_ and a burst of sulfur, she’s perched atop the altar, coiled like a rattlesnake.

June still can’t make out her face, but when she grins, her lips stretch far wider than any natural human smile, and she knows this can’t be a person. Her thin, sharp, ragged teeth that glisten with frothy saliva shouldn’t be in a human’s mouth, shouldn’t be reflecting light while the rest of her face is not.

Her face. June can't see any more of it, but the inky outline of it is shifting, like the flesh has been made sentient and is in the process of rearranging itself into something different.

And her eyes. _God_. Her eyes are wolf-like, flat orange pupils burning with hellfire. And within that fire, the murky past, ancient memory of the blurry time before the first civilizations.

 _Don’t you want to see?_   She croons in a voice both old and young, both mocking and genuine, repulsive and seductive, coming from inside her head and right in front of her. _Don’t you want to know?_

No. She doesn’t.

Please, God, she _doesn’t_.

June’s mind goes blank with terror, and she whimpers, eyes filling with tears. She scrambles up the incline, head spinning, and the scraping, popping shuffle of the creature ambling along behind her. For a moment, she feels wispy fingers grasp at her ankle, so she kicks like a mule and climbs faster.

There’s no way out. There’s no way she can climb up that chute in time. No other exit. She's trapped here.

June realizes it a moment too late, as her foot catches in a loop of her rope, and she tumbles, head over heels, into the far end of the cave. Her helmet goes flying off her head as the buckle under her chin snaps.

June rolls over a sharp edge, and down onto a pile of something sharp that digs into her ribs, and clatters under her fingers. Her head clangs against something so hard, she feels a _pop_ in her neck. Somewhere above her, there’s a high, rattling, almost girlish chuckle.

She pulls herself to her knees, and gasps as something rough and metallic slices through her palms. Her fingers smear blood on a small pot that cracks as she scuffles into a corner of the hole, and shines her light at it’s contents.

Swords. Two crude, rusted swords, wet with her blood.

And beneath them, a ragged pile of ancient bone splinters, shattered long before she’d fallen on them.

She’s in a grave.

The scraping is so close now.

June looks up, into the hungry orange eyes of the creature, clutching the edge of the grave and leaning in. Her filthy hair falls like a veil, tickling June’s legs. There’s a crescent shape adorning her forehead. Her shadowy head cocks to the side like a cat’s as it regards it’s shaking, filthy prey.

That’s what she is. Prey.

As her face finally catches the light, June sobs.

She’s looking into her own face.

Gray and wispy and made of something no more substantial than cobwebs and shadow, with two smoldering embers for eyes and a mouth full of too many teeth that glimmers with gray-white light as it stretches too far open.

A chaotic, boiling wind seems to gather in the creature’s throat as she leans in close and brushes the tears out of June’s face with her hot, misty fingers. There’s nothing tender about the gesture, like a farmer stroking livestock he intends to slaughter.

June can do nothing but scream as the creature’s hands clasp her throat, and writhing tendrils of white smoke fly from her glowing mouth as it presses itself over June's. They drive deep into her nose and mouth, raking her throat and clawing at the inside of her lungs and eye sockets with red-hot fingernails.

The creature pours herself into June, dragging her by her hair down a long, rippling tunnel that is alive and strong and ringed with teeth.


	2. it's strange, sure is strange

They had thought to seal her away, to let time bury her until her name was lost forever.

And for a very long while, they had succeeded.

But the traitors had turned to worm meat, and from worm meat to dirt, from dirt to dust. Their souls withered into dead air, their faces had rotted away. The Enchantress had not deemed them important enough for names.

She’d occupied much of her time in the chamber with curling and rolling along the inside of every skull adorning the walls, remembering the faces that had once covered them, and feeling no small amount of pleasure that they were trapped here forever, powerless to stop her eventual escape.

It’s only just. They’d overstepped their place, dared to spite their betters because they’d allowed seeds of doubt to take root in their hearts.

Doubt that she had fostered, she must admit. She had grown lazy and decadent and lenient over the many generations of her rule. She’d still played with her subjects, as was her right, but she had failed to remind them who she was. The horrific displays of fantastic power that had once made her name feared across countless tribes and city-states, that had birthed pantheons of gods, had become a thing of the past.

It had been a mistake.

One she won’t make again.

She is huddled in the back of her newest vessel’s mind as a dozen strange hands sweep over her, pressing strange tubes and metal instruments into her skin in a blindingly white room vibrating with metallic buzzing and strange sharp chirping. The Enchantress likens the sense of violation to one she’d experienced before her imprisonment.

No, that’s not quite right. At least these people bothered to put her vessel to sleep before they began pawing at her body, and even now, they’re being so careful. The Enchantress was not granted such kindness.

It’s not something she likes to think about. During her time in the dark, she’d gone through great lengths to avoid it, even rewriting her own memory, in her darkest and most desperate moments, to exclude it. And her brother, loyal as he’s always been and as much as she loves him, has never been particularly intelligent. He’d only been able to offer rambling tales punctuated with incoherent confusion and mindless rage whenever she’d asked him.

She’d had to piece it together herself, while spread through the air of their prison, feeling along the runes that had been etched into the urns in hopes that she might gain some knowledge of what spells had been keeping them there, what unknown form of sorcery had kept them trapped.

To her outrage, the impenetrable charms had been written in _her_ script.

What had been the most efficient and elegant system of writing in the world, devised by the best scribes of the most advanced peoples of their world at her behest, had been _perverted_ by lesser beings. It had been meant for her and her alone, and to ensure this, she’d killed each and every person involved in it’s creation after she’d mastered it, grinding their bones into dust to be used in her spells. She’d taught it to no one. No one but… _oh. Of course._

Her acolytes. The traitors in her cave had to have been lead by someone who knew all her secrets. All but one, but she can’t think too much about that. Even though her vessel’s conscious is lolling about in a sedated gaze, there’s a chance she could hear it.

She’d made another mistake then, in opening her heart to the women with magic flowing through their veins. She’d shared with them the mysteries of the arcane, promised them a glimpse of divinity, taught them the secret language that she’d tattooed on her body to enhance her spells, all in exchange for the most talented woman’s body once she’d drained her current vessel dry, or had otherwise tired of it. More than a fair trade, in her opinion. They should be honored. They _are_ honored, when she chooses them. It’s only instinct that makes them scream and cry and beg her to stop.

She knows exactly who it had been, then. The most promising of her students, the girl with the beautiful dark eyes and the songbird’s voice.

The Enchantress won’t deign to speak or even think her name even now, after she’s escaped the darkness. Names have immense power, and one can only be well and truly dead if no one remembers them. It’s part of how she’s survived so long, she thinks. Her legacy, though diluted and far from accurate, is alive and flourishing in the legends that are rooted in the mind of her newest vessel. People know enough of her to speak the names she's accumulated over the centuries, fostering intrigue in her power, charging her magic even with her heart gone.

 _Her most promising_. The one she’d draped in jewels and finery, who’d had the deepest and most intimate education in all the Enchantress had learned in over a thousand years of travel and exploration, who’d wanted for nothing.

She had discovered what would become of her spirit once the Enchantress took up residence in her body, and she had _cowered._

A funny thing, that makes her smoky chest throb with laughter from within the mind of her vessel. Her favorite couldn’t have cared less when they’d played their games with her subjects, turning them inside out and into strange thousand-eyed creatures, equal parts sport and study. She’d _delighted_ in it.

Only when her own destiny had become known to her had the selfish little beast decided it was time for a change. How ungrateful.

The culprit discovered, the Enchantress had entertained herself for decades more with glorious fantasies of vengeance, before the boredom settled in and ground at her like a pestle.

It had become so unbearable that she’d finally tumbled into the grave at the opposite side of the cave, and traced her rusted swords and the shattered bones of their desecrated vessels with fingers made of heated air.

She’d been horrified. The brutes hadn’t just torn them from their chosen vessels during the transference, they’d shredded the bodies into meat not fit for dogs to consume, and left them in an undignified heap to decay.

As she searches her subconscious again now, hoping for something to have given way during her botched transference, she realizes, she simply _does not know_ what happened. The most she gets are intense flashes of fury and terror and bone-grinding agony that leave her coiled in on herself and shaking with sickness that radiates through her new body.

Somewhere above her, past the vast expanse of her vessel’s mind and beyond the layers of flesh and blood and bone and chemical sleep, the figures attending her begin to panic, jabbering in a strange tongue among themselves.

For a moment, the Enchantress does as well. She could die with this body. But then she remembers.

Her horror had bloomed into utter delight, as she realized that her heart- _oh, they hadn’t thought to destroy it, her lie had worked-_ was intact.

(It still is. Far away and still there, beneath the earth. She has to find it.)

But her heart is useless without a body. A mere conduit for her power, the last reminder from her first vessel, the thing that binds her to this dimension.

So the Enchantress had gathered the tendrils of what little magic had escaped her urn.

Though they were fine as strands of drifting spider silk, she had been able to feel out far more than the dimensions of their tomb, spreading slowly and thinly, until her influence clung to every surface of the cave complex. She could feel, yes, but she could not truly touch. She’d been too weak to dislodge either of their molded prisons, too weak to move a pebble, too weak to stir up a breeze.

She could leave their prison only through her voice, and it was past a plane of endless fog, too far out of reach to do more than call out and hope someone was there to answer.

And for perhaps an eon, there hadn’t been. The few insects and crawling things that inhabited her cavern had failed to be enough very soon. And then, the small creatures that fell into her domain from the forest above would not sate her. She was starving for a body, for something new, for something _fun._

So, in an effort to keep herself from going completely mad, the Enchantress begun experimenting, as she had in the earliest days, trying to revel in her lack of a body, trying to take her brother's words to heart long after they'd repeated themselves into meaninglessness.

_No one can hurt you now. No one can hurt you. No one can. I won't let them._

Well-meant, but naive, as he often is. This is why she is the one who draws their lines and determines their path.

Of _course_ she can be hurt like this. Of _course_ she can. If he hadn't been enough when her power had been at it's highest, he certainly won't be enough at it's lowest. Not while they're trapped and separate and disembodied. Not while her heart is gone. 

So the Enchantress had decided to rely on herself, biding her time, and weaving her web with painstaking care.

She fluttered fitfully along the roof of the cave, dancing over the sharp jagged points to persuade them to drop off and shatter their urns, but the stone had not answered her.

She traded whispered half-words and fading memories with her brother, so they’d remember the shapes of the syllables, and still, the meanings begun to blur from disuse, and she begun recalling events through a strange distorted film.

She sank deep into the mud and festered, howling in fury and dismay until the soil bubbled and frothed and the cavern trembled with rage equaling her brother’s.

And _then,_ after an unknown number of millennia had scrolled away into the distant, blurred past, an infuriatingly disappointing group of men arrived. Her brother was not without his vanity, and he never took a vessel to root his power in who wasn’t among the greatest specimens of the male gender. And the men who’d discovered their cave were decidedly not preferable. Despite her protestations, they’d left unharmed.

So they’d waited again. And then, _finally,_ the first humans with a suitable vessel descended years later.

No, not suitable. _Perfect._ Young and healthy and beautiful. And _teeming_ with undiscovered magic.

It’s like it was meant to be.

She had been drawn to the woman like a bird of prey to a wounded rabbit, and she had been rewarded for her endless patience when the name spoken by her companions lured her into the dark.

The transference had been far from perfect, much like her first, but she’d been weak and hasty and out of practice. Really, it’s a miracle they’re both not dead.

For that, she’ll be grateful.

For now. Until she finds a way to cheat the original inhabitant out of her body and into oblivion, as she had all others, with the exception of her first.

The figures _-doctors,_ says a mind-voice, clear as a bell, as the veil of false sleep begins to lift, and the vessel settles into consciousness.

The _doctors_ have ceased their hovering. She’ll be fine.

But sitting so close to the veil without touching it is exhausting, and the vessel tenses, feeling her gathered at the edges as her own mind sharpens. Interesting, but irrelevant.

The Enchantress pitches back into the dark ringed tunnel with a laugh.

Her enemies are dead and forgotten, and they’ll always be.

And her?

She is _free_.

 

* * *

 

She’s been gone for too long. This is obvious. People don’t understand their place anymore. They don’t understand _magic_ anymore. How else can she explain the utter _obliviousness_ her vessel has to the coils of icy, jagged energy lurking in her body? The woman is filled with magic and she has _no idea._ That’s why she’d chosen her in the first place. After all, there had been several women who’d wandered into the cave, and she's not below taking a slightly older body, at least temporarily. Seeing her had been _perfect,_ like it was meant to be, fate rewarding her for her patience.

But the woman refuses to acknowledge her own power, or the divine being waiting inside her.

And the Enchantress is too weak to correct her. She’s without her heart, without control of her new body, without her brother to lend her his strength.

The Enchantress is hardly more than a scrap of shadow, utterly drained of energy.

She’s not powerless anymore, but it’s a far cry from the force of nature she’d once been.

That has to change.

She decides to start with information.

It’s easy enough to make the long climb up the tunnel, to perch on the edge of the unwelcome loiterer’s subconscious and peer through the veil. She doesn’t touch it. To do so would lead to her fingertips burning holes in it.

If she does that, her vessel will know.

She isn’t afraid of the woman whose body she now owns. Not at all. It’s just that right now, she needs to gather as much information as she can about the new world she’s found herself in. If her vessel knows, she could react unpleasantly, and the Enchantress isn’t yet ready for that.

The world is new, full of different dangers. She has to be careful.

The image is blurred and echoing. Strange rooms, strange sounds, all closely confined. This place is different from the shining room, without any other people rushing about. Better. Darker, cooler, calmer.

The woman doesn’t leave this place except for occasional quick rushes to different rooms awash with fascinating smells, returning with armfuls of strange food in shining wrappers that the Enchantress is enthralled with, dancing along the edge of her vessel’s taste buds as she eats.

There is no one here but them.

Her vessel has no children, no lovers, no followers, no parents, no siblings. Pity. If she’d had a brother, the Enchantress would delight in gifting him to hers. There’s something to be said about the two of them sharing vessels with similar flesh.

No one speaks to the woman in person, only through a strange device that chirps unpleasantly every few hours. And the conversations are never for long, and always end with the woman crying.

The Enchantress listens with rapt attention, plucking words and phrases from her vessel’s mouth and rolling them about inside her head. Sometimes, her vessel regurgitates them in a sputter, and spends the next few hours trembling, staring at the wood grain of her walls. The Enchantress finds her reaction hilarious, and resolves to do it more often, rooting words out from within her mind and twisting them around, studying their meaning and memorizing the syntax. Words are vital to magic, and whatever new languages and objects have come along in the time she’s been gone, she’s determined to learn.

Aside from those few incidents, her vessel is at absolute ease here. This place is her home.

But that doesn’t matter, the Enchantress decides a month later, when the word game becomes dull. This is _her_ body now. It was always meant to be hers. It’s time for the woman to surrender it.

But when the witch goes to lift the veil, to hiss her commands into the woman’s ear, she’s met with silence.

No, not silence. The slamming of a door in her face. The deliberate ignorance of her orders. The _gall._ The woman wasn’t just ignorant, she was profoundly disrespectful. Perhaps even an idiot.

She’ll wait. She’s waited nearly four thousand years for her freedom. She can let the little creature settle back into her little life. Wait for her to stop _trembling_ so much, really, the anxiety’s starting to seep into the Enchantress, making her squirm and prickle.

Her first vessel had been something like this, she recalls. How had she broken her? How had she even come across her?

It had been before the first human cities had been built, and she had been young and curious and nameless and hopelessly bored. She’d ventured beyond the confines of her own plane of existence, under the watchful eyes of a strange and enigmatic being that called itself Dzamor.

She’d known nothing about Dzamor, other than its name, and that it had been willing to help her cross over. Once she had left her dimension behind, they’d never crossed paths again. But Dzamor had taught her a lesson of the utmost importance before it had vanished: Power in the dimension she now calls home can only be channeled through a vessel of flesh and blood.

So, with careful deliberation, the then-unnamed being had emerged in a cavern on a cold, rainy, then-unnamed island that her vessel calls England. She collided roughly with a young woman who’d been living there, casting bones into fires and reading the cracks, convinced her pathetic little tricks had been true magic. She had been terribly wrong, and the thing the Enchantress had once been had trembled with excitement at teaching her exactly that.

The transference had gone very poorly.

It had been painful and confusing and she had suffered greatly, mistakenly emerging from within the woman’s heart rather than in the open air around her. She hadn’t been able to properly assume the physical form, to snatch up the spirit of the body she’d chosen and fling it into oblivion, or else, swallow it whole. Instead, she had simply smashed her way in through the center, leaving much of her power rooted in a living, beating organ, the memories of who she’d once been scattered and fading.

As a result of her failure, she’d been forced to share her first body.

The girl, whoever she’d been, fluttered like a trapped moth in the back of her mind. She’d never truly vanished for good, not until she’d leapt into the next body, leaving the little insect to wither inside the husk she’d left behind, unable to escape it into the waiting arms of death.

But before she had, she’d adopted a name. The final step in establishing herself, legitimizing her power in this physical dimension.

The first people, fishers who’d wandered into the marsh she’d claimed as her territory, had been enthralled with her, the strange woman who could float like a cloud and heal their ailments and conjure brilliant visions of spirits out of threads of green-gold light.

 _Witch,_ they’d called her. And though they weren’t entirely correct, she had accepted the label. It was a perfectly natural assumption, she’d thought at the time. But they had been right. She’d been a recluse, far removed from the tribes of roving humans, performing her experiments and developing spells.

 _Enchantress,_ they’d called her, after she’d wandered down to the fires when the loneliness had been too much to bear. And she’d come to adore the word, the way it rolled off their tongues with exaltation as they leaned towards the dancing images she’d conjured in the shadows of the firelight, fingers spread and faces bright.

Not _an_ Enchantress, but _the_ Enchantress. The first and greatest and most powerful of her kind. She stood alone, high above the rest, the standard to which all magical beings were held.

And the Enchantress she had been, though she could never speak her own name aloud. The moth-girl hadn’t truly gone away, the clever little witch mimic had found a way to wrestle control from her. Every time the Enchantress had tried to call attention to her own glory, she’d been sucked sharply backwards, like she was caught in the grip of a cyclone, as the girl replaced her.

But the Enchantress could play her games too. She’d slither up that dark, jagged tunnel, run her fingers along the edge of her conscious, send vicious little creatures made of shadow crawling about on the inside of her vision, nipping at her skin. She’d whisper from within her ear, _say it, say it, say it,_ until she’d obeyed, sobbing and shivering.

She’d haunted the girl for years, turning it into one of the most entertaining games she’d ever played, stringing her along like a puppet. Perhaps she’ll do it again.

And when her body withered from premature age, as a result of an irresponsible use of power, the Enchantress had decided she did not want to die. She had no interest in leaving for yet another realm, so soon after discovering this one.

She had searched far and wide, even daring to fly across the sea in search of a body. Young and beautiful and healthy and brimming with magic for her to consume. She would have only the best, because she deserves only the best.

She’d found her. This time, when the transference was complete, there had been only her, liberated from the dull claws of a whining, weeping spirit, and swallowing the newest one whole.

The only token she’d kept of the old body had been her heart, carefully mummified and transplanted into the new body.

And when she could close her eyes and withdraw to the back of her mind without shrill sobs echoing back at her, she’d finally been able to _focus._

She’d had much to discover, and she’d done so with great hunger. Her potentially limitless power unfolded before her, and her thirst for knowledge grew deep and ravenous. The world was so large, she could feel it turning beneath her feet. And it was all within her reach.

She’d taken to traveling. Following the fires of the first men, the cries of strange creatures in the dark, the pull of the magic buried deep beneath her feet. There had been no place in the world she could not reach, and many generations had been spent just drinking it all in.

She’d wandered marshes and highlands, deserts and tundras, mountaintops and beaches, plains and forests. The Enchantress never settled in one place for long, though she did favor some places more than others. Not until hundreds of years later, when she’d desired a kingdom of her own, had she settled, choosing the most suitable place for herself and her brother to reign.

She’d learned the language of every people she’d come across, and had a hand in spreading the idea of transforming meaningless symbols scratched into stone into syllables. There’s a strong likelihood that the characters her vessel spends the majority of her time pouring over had developed the way they had because of her.

She’d hunted creatures her host doesn’t even know had ever existed, far greater and more terrible than any of the monsters that exist today, and bathed in their blood during her rituals, adorning herself with their fangs and claws and skins, leaving the meat out to rot.

She’d mastered a long-lost form of the art of swordplay from a civilization she’d destroyed in a single night just to see if she could. From the vast array of knowledge the Enchantress combs through in her vessel’s well-organized mind, she knows that no one’s found it yet. They’d have to dig much deeper. She’d been thorough.

She’d watched roving tribes transform into towns, and then into city-states, and wandered the streets, bare feet stained with the dirt of distant lands. She'd offer them tokens of her travels. Snippets of cloth or beads of precious stones that couldn’t have been found on their side of the world, that could bless them with a hundred years of glowing health or else cause them to sprout claws out of their eyelids. Words for things they would never see and stories of monsters and men she’d encountered whispered their way from one settlement to the next.

She’d met people who were not quite people at all. People closer in nature to her, but still something different. People who had come from beyond the stars and below the sea.

And still, there had been no one who could stand by her side. No one but her brother, but she’d spent close to a thousand years wandering the world before he’d come along. When he’d appeared before her, she’d long thought herself the only one of her kind. And despite how close they’d become, she still felt somewhat detached, still does, but she loves him as much as she can.

When the humans started calling her _goddess,_ she did nothing to dissuade them. It made perfect sense. Of course that’s what she is. Her power is limitless. She and her brother are the mother and father of countless pantheons and myths and legends. And they demand to be treated as such.

Which makes her current situation enraging.

The little mouse isn’t listening, isn’t _obeying_ as she should be, and it’s not for a lack of intelligence, not for lack of knowledge, as she’d originally concluded.

No, she _knows_ there’s something in the back of her mind that wasn’t there before. She had left the caverns with something more to her that the doctors hadn’t found, something alive and volatile, longing to expand and tear through stone and sea and sky, pretending to be just another harmless piece of her mind.

_Look at the tomb. What did they find? You need to know._

She knows the voice in her mind isn’t a piece of her overactive imagination. She knows the thoughts the Enchantress has been planting in her head aren’t natural. She won’t be so easily influenced again.

Days turn to weeks, and still, progress is at a crawl. Day by day, as the Enchantress reaches further and further into the veil, showing great restraint to avoid damaging it as her vessel _\- no._

June Moone.

Her name is _June Moone._

 _June Moone_ becomes more and more skittish, avoiding an entire portion of her home for fear that the Enchantress might somehow puppet her limbs into seeking information on the cave that had united them. To her credit, she isn’t wrong. But it's a work in progress.

She spends more and more of her time pouring over papers with pleasant musty smells in a completely different chamber, joined to the home by a corridor of leaves and dappled sunlight. Her hand cramps from painstaking scribbling in shining green ink. The Enchantress peers curiously at what she’s written, but she’s only picked up scraps of sentences from June’s mind, and it’s hardly enough to string anything coherent together. And her handwriting is atrociously inconsistent, changing spacing and style of characters between words.

 _What are you planning?_ The Enchantress wonders.

Days later, June Moone leaves home for a very long time, traveling a long ways through a blurred tunnel of stone and grating sound, into a room with smells that both repulse and delight the Enchantress, and then back again.

When she feels the witchgrass itching in June’s arms as she carries bundles and bundles into her home, she finds herself trembling with anticipation at the _games_ they’ll play.

Because this waiting game has gone on long enough. She’s out of her prison, but also out of control. Peering at blurred shapes won’t satisfy her.

Her heart and her brother are missing. She needs to find them.

And this whimpering, skittish, mouselike little woman has no idea who she’s denying, what she’s tempting with her silly little remedies.

Oh, this could be _fun._

 

* * *

 

It takes weeks for the Enchantress to gather enough strength to play her game.

During that time, June Moone has left bundles of witchgrass in every corner of her house, choked the air with absurd smelling incense, and stacked every heavy thing in her house against the door to the room with the knowledge the Enchantress seeks. She’s also taken every sharp object in her home and locked them in a box, leaving it on the curb of her stinky stone street for the wheeled machines to take.

The incense is more annoying than it is detrimental, and June is more bothered by it than she is, constantly wheezing whenever she gets too close to the candles, so she begins avoiding the windows and centers of rooms. All the better.

The knives are a definite problem, but there are many people who live around her. Surely they have some that the Enchantress can take once she gains control.

The witch grass has little effect on her, only a slightly unpleasant itching that she can easily ignore.

But June doesn’t know that.

Whenever she steps closer to it, the Enchantress slips further down the tunnel, hanging on by the edges of her nails.

So it’s entirely expected when she fills the dusty bathtub with soil, plants the witchgrass, and spends hours crouched in it, thinking herself quite safe as she formulates more and more absurd plans to suppress her.

It’s when she leaves that the Enchantress begins her game.

She tears stinging ribbons into the smoky veil with exhaustive effort, and sends her tendrils through. No point in being subtle when June Moone already knows.

A fog made of shivering, building dread settles over June’s mind in the black of night, goading her to listlessly pace the halls of her empty home for hours on end, until the sun rises.

Every time she reaches for the switch that turns on the artificial lights, the Enchantress wraps her fingers around June’s shaky little heart and squeezes until her face turns blue.

 _Who would believe you if you asked for help?_ she asks, when a hand grasps for the object she calls a phone, and June screams in anger, shattering the little machine against the opposite wall with great force.

The smell of rotten meat and the air before a lightning strike is easy to maintain, and so it becomes a constant undercurrent, and the first time it really comes at June like a wave, she doubles over in a coughing fit.

She plugs her nose with balls of something strange and fluffy, and the Enchantress is beside herself, cackling so hard she loses her grip and has to start her game over again.

She climbs back up, running her foggy fingers along the inside of her throat. Whenever June tries to eat, she tastes dirt made from corpse flesh and writhing maggots. June Moone spends hours crouched over a shining white bowl, retching nothing at all, and scrubs her teeth until her gums bleed.

And then she stops eating, leaving the food to rot and gather insects.

Whenever she tries to bathe, taking quick, cool showers under a metal mouth that spits rainwater, she’ll come away feeling herself coated in drying slime, and claw at her skin until red marks streak her perfect skin.

And then she stops bathing, hiding under layers of baggy clothing, so the Enchantress makes burrs and thorns appear in every piece of fabric June dares to let touch her skin, until she’s naked and shivering.

Whenever the Enchantress’s tendrils brush against the insides of June’s eyes, sinuous violent shapes swoop before her at random, making her shriek and jump backwards. On one particular instance that causes the witch to shake the inside of June’s head with laughter, she stumbles back and over a series of wooden steps, shattering the odd glass coins she wears over her eyes and covering her backside with deep purple bruises.

June is unable to find a way to circumvent this, so the Enchantress allows her to move unharmed with one condition: She must crawl through her hallways like a dog. She even keeps her head bowed, eyes fixed on the wood beneath her hands and feet, as she scurries, vermin-like, from one room to the next.

And all the while, the Enchantress curls in June’s inner ear, regurgitating the words and sentences she’s learned, piecing them into coherent thoughts. She tries a different accent and inflection each time. Practice, for when she has control. She hasn’t spoken a word in a very long time. Maybe it’s time for a change in voice. And she likes the sensation of all the hair on June Moone’s back standing up whenever she hears the Enchantress whisper.

_Look at it. What happened to the tomb? What did they find? Who’s in your head? You want to know, don’t you?_

That’s what it takes, in the end.

June Moone’s own insatiable curiosity, writhing in her mind like a nest of cockroaches, is impossible to break, so the Enchantress decides to corrupt it.

Fine. She wants to know? She will.

Two weeks into the Enchantress’s long game, on a humid summer evening when the air is charged with the promise of a storm and the last rays of the shortening summer days are bleeding through her window along the pale blue walls of her bathroom, June Moone surrenders.

She is curled in a ball in her bed of witchgrass like a sick rabbit, the tall stalks rubbing angry red marks into her dirty skin. Her bones have begun to show through, and there are deep dark bags under her eyes. Her mousy hair is limp and she has begun to smell.

June wails so loudly that the people who live nearby, whose homes share the walls of hers, must have heard her. It's a wonderful mix of sorrow and anger and terror, and the Enchantress relishes it.

But then she swallows the humiliated anguish, wrapping herself in a plush blue bathrobe that the Enchantress quite enjoys, and wouldn’t mind allowing her to keep, and leaves the room.

 _Good girl,_ she croons as June descends the steps of her house on her feet, for the first time in over a week. She keeps her posture rigid, but she’s standing straight and tall, digging her nails into her palms until they draw blood. She still stares at the shadows like a hunted animal.

June sets to work excavating the door, clearing away the furniture with a slow clumsiness the Enchantress can tell is intentional.

She enters the room she hasn’t allowed herself to look at in over a month, settling in a fluffy chair, unfolding her well-worn silver machine with the shining face covered in fingerprints. Black spots like grainy brush strokes twist in both of their eyes as the unexpected light appears, but June ignores it and presses on.

Then she takes in a sharp breath, and a waterfall of knowledge pours into her mind.

The Enchantress surges forth to bathe in it, hurriedly making sense of phrases and words.

Her tomb had been opened like a carcass, and the vultures had descended to pick at it.

Countless images of the traitors’ skulls, far more accurate than any drawing she’s ever seen, flash before her eyes, and she quivers in pleasure. _Look at me,_ she wants to sing, _I’m free and you’ll never be._

Her brother. Still trapped. In the hands of strangers, taken from her cave.

She’ll find him. She just needs to get her strength back first.

Their bones, all laid out next to bright yellow measuring sticks, every single piece accounted for.

Her swords. Ruined by four thousand years of mud and humidity, but not beyond saving, if she has her heart.

Her heart, withered and mummified, in the plastic-covered hands of a clueless man. Does he have any idea what he’s holding?

_Where is it?_

The contents of her tomb had been removed, she reads, taken to a place in-

June snaps the machine closed, and roughly flings it across the room. There’s a shattering clash past her field of vision, and the Enchantress gapes.

The corners of June’s lips turn upwards at her tiny victory, before red-hot fingers press outwards on the insides of her temples.

“Who _are_ you?” Her voice is hoarse and cracked, but strangely calm, and she’s shaking her head, brow furrowed, fingers tracing her forehead.

These are the first words June has ever spoken to her, and they are _perfect._

The Enchantress’s foggy face twists into a brilliant grin.

_You know my name, don’t you? You’ve known it all along. Now, you’re a smart girl. Say it._

June frowns, and the Enchantress is struck with a sensation she’s never felt before.

An icy chill that blurs her own foggy heat at the edges. Cold, bright hands curling up the corners of the veil, and _she shouldn’t be doing that._

“Enchantress.”

 

* * *

 

For a very long time, she had been a wild and shapeless thing, unbound by skin and bones. Not since her arrival in this world in the distant past had she been without a physical body, and she’d been trapped as little more than vapor for four thousand years.

As a result, she’s more than a little out of practice when it comes to navigating it.

To be specific, the first time the Enchantress rises to her full height, she falls flat on her face. Her tarnished headpiece clangs against the hard wooden floor, and a low groan escapes her lips.

She will need to take this more slowly than she’d hoped.

The witch begins to crawl, coiled in on herself like a stalking jungle cat. The rusted chains and chips of mail and jade of her ruined clothing follow her in a clinking trail, and her hair, filthy and matted with feathers, trail after her like a nest of living vines. She's caked in layers of ash and soil so thick she can barely make out the marks on her shoulders and belly and thighs, trailing blackened hand and footprints on the cool, smooth wood. They'd taken the witch out of the cave, but not the cave out of the witch. But it's familiar, the filth she's smothered in. And familiar is vital right now.

When she’d been lurking in the corners of June’s eyes, she’d only seen a faded, distorted picture. She knows the shapes of things, and has a foggy idea of their uses and what to call them. But she’d been severely limited. She could only experience from a distance, but now, she’s laid bare in June Moone’s new world with no barrier to separate herself from it.

She genuinely has no idea what she’s stumbled into, just how _strange_ this new world is.

The first thing she notices is the light. Yellow-tinted and wholly unnatural, flickering from bright to dark and back again, charged by the burst of energy set off by her transformation, washing the area in unfriendly light. The little suns in glass balls had replaced torchlight, she knows.

After years of absolute darkness, it only makes her eyes throb and grow heavy in their sockets, so she sets to work snatching them off of their metal roots without much care to how they singe her hands. It doesn’t matter, she can feel the warm sensation of her skin mending itself, the tattoos buried under layers of ash and dirt shimmering deep green as they set to work. She smashes them against the walls. She folds the fabric of the world until the edges of the map brush and rub off against one another, creating holes for her to slip through, and she laughs in delight when she realizes she can still do it, even as weak as she is. She starts small, flickering from room to room in bursts of smoke to quicken the task.

When darkness descends on the house, and the aching in her eyes is sated, she finally thinks to inspect her surroundings.

The house June Moone lives in is not made of carved stone blocks, but sheets of highly refined dark wood that is almost slippery under the Enchantress’s feet, and she longs for dirt and mud and stone, something with texture. The structure consists of hard geometric shapes and neat lines that trick her vision. There are no plants anywhere, nothing made of pure earth. The flowery patterns on the walls are shallow and painted onto sheets of paper that she tears handholds into as she crawls up the walls.

Everything is closed behind solid wooden doors that seem to nearly vanish into the smooth painted walls, and she runs her hands along the grooves, balancing on the brass balls that roll under her bare feet and pull the doors open. There’s a claustrophobic feeling to the entire place, with no open spaces to see the sky.

The many pieces of furniture are also made of a combination of impeccably crafted wood and a luxurious fluffy material the Enchantress rips into and rolls about in, and the objects that populate June Moone’s home make no _sense._

There are no woven mats or baskets, no weapons or animal skins or firestarters anywhere. The only familiar metal she finds are a handful of gleaming copper shards that she recognizes as coins. But coins shouldn’t be so small, so refined. And they certainly should not be kept in glass jars shaped like pigs. She breaks that too.

The paper in her home is texture-less and blindingly white, and the words are stamped with alarming uniformity, so small she can barely read them, and bound together so tightly into thick bundles she tears open.

A stray piece of starlight seems to be curled on the ground in front of her. She’d never known stars to be flat and rectangular and tablet-shaped with metal backs. So it must be a machine. What does June Moone call this?

A tablet. How disappointing.

The Enchantress tosses it aside, hears it crash into something made of glass with a sharp _crack,_ and turns to the direction of the noise with interest.

Portions of the polished walls are made of glossy panes of glass. She presses her cheek to one, tracing her fingers along a collection of cracks resembling a spider’s web, and presses until chunks of the glass fly away.

She can hear the soft rushing of the rain, the lulling roll of thunder, and the scent of ozone leaks into the home, sending pleasant chills down her spine.

It’s quite warm outside, and she stares, mesmerized by the small, round droplets that begin to patter onto the glass and roll down. Quickly, the Enchantress sticks her fingers through the widening hole, and feels for the little wet tapping of water on them. She smiles when the water finally sprinkles onto them. She wants to be outside, to feel the water on her face, the wind lifting her further than she can fly. Surely the rain hasn’t changed.

But then, after a massive roll of thunder makes the sky tremble, she hears a low hissing from the large room where June had dragged most of the heaviest objects from.

The Enchantress is not about to let a challenge go unanswered, and lowers her body, flashing across the hall. She barely lets her toes touch the floor before she vanishes in a puff of sulfur, flitting from surface to surface. She hangs upside-down from the doorway, and snarls at a hissing box that flickers like a swarm of flies, mounted on the wall opposite her.

Television. It’s a television. A thing that isn’t alive, though it speaks in many voices, and plays music with strange instruments she doesn’t know the names to yet. June doesn’t use it much, so she doesn’t quite grasp what it’s for, but the Enchantress has deduced so far that it’s for watching living pictures.

She flashes across the room, perching on top of it, searching for the little buttons June had pressed to make it shut up, and starts when she hears it snap off the wall.

She leaps backwards, onto a small crust of oddly placed metal and crystal hanging from the ceiling, and jolts as the television shatters on the floor, sputtering and dying.

The glimmering, swinging thing she’s currently hanging from is called a _chandelier_. Such a beautiful word, she rolls it about in her mouth again and again, until the metal roots that help it cling to the ceiling shudder loose, and an earsplitting musical crash shakes the room as she swings away, and hovers, suspended in air.

She can still fly.

From outside the thick walls, she can feel the next roll of thunder resonate in the sky, and it calls to her from deep in her bones.

Who is she to refuse it?

The Enchantress takes in a deep breath, and pours herself forth into the rain-slashed night.

 

* * *

 

The sky is crowded and sick.

Once, she’d only shared it with bats and birds, and she’d been able to fly even higher than they. The Enchantress would drop down into the middle of storms to watch lightning dance around her, and slither along her limbs like swift insects, and listen to the deafening roar of thunder like a symphony of war drums. She’d even ascend far beyond them, looking down on hurricanes from far above the eye, and then push herself even further. She’d made it high enough to where the air would turn to crystals of ice when it kissed her skin, and then back again into beads of water as she’d descended, where she’d had to slow the beating of her heart and the frequency of her breaths, as it grew thinner and thinner. She’d been so close to touching the moon, and the stars were so close, she could almost hold them in her hands.

But now massive metal flying beasts crowd it, moaning and tearing long pale stripes in the air, ripping through the hearts of the clouds and giving the rain a heavier, slimier feel, like a tongue made of metal is lapping at her skin.

When she’s in the midst of the storm, trying to draw the lightning into her waiting fingers, and she hears the roar of the metal monster as it tears through the cloud behind her, she screams, and lets herself fall.

She can’t kill them yet. Not like this.

So she catches herself in midair, hovering below the clouds with her hair twisting and writhing like a living net, clawing at the air. The moon is only a faint yellow blot casting a haze down onto the earth. She can only gape at the changes the centuries had wrought.

This is not a _new_ world as she’d originally thought, because the magic is still here, ebbing and flowing beneath the earth. She can still hear the rustling of small pockets of trees, the rushing thrum of the ocean, the cries of night birds. She feels the wind wrapping around her face like filmy cloth, the rain soaking her body, the hum of electricity in the air.

This is a different world. That’s all. Everything seems to have changed in her absence, so completely that she doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to make sense of it. Everything she knows is gone or buried, and she is completely alone and far more vulnerable than she’d ever thought she’d be. The nervous fluttering in the hole in her chest is fear, and she doesn’t like it.

There’s an ugly layer of noise drowning out the magic, the droning whirs of the machines, and the air is filmy and thick with the sickness they belch out. She can barely see the stars for the hideous orange haze cast over the sky that isn’t suffocated by storm clouds, but she can still tell that some of them are gone from existence.

And once, people had been few and far between, always a welcome gift to stumble across, and infinitely easy to leave behind.

But now? There are terrible crowds of them, living in glimmering monuments of stone and metal and glass, crisscrossing the night with a thousand streaks of false light. This is far removed from the huts and temples she’d once inhabited, and it’s certainly not a good thing.

The people have strangled the wild places, choked the shores, left so few places untouched that the Enchantress knows she’ll have to search far and wide for a private place to regain her strength. She may not even find one at all. She can feel the glass eyes fixed to the sides of the towers watching her as she glides past, peering in the glass windows at their activities.

They don’t even seem to sleep anymore. Far below her, the rivers of stone that had long replaced dirt roads are rumbling with activity. The wheeled machines bark at one another, flashing ugly yellow and blue and red and white lights as they skitter like insects from place to place. Not even night or a storm is enough to stop them.

Night had been hers, as day had been his. She’d stay awake after the people had slept, and work long into the night, calling upon the moon to give her it’s power. The silence had been so important for her concentration, but now it’s gone, punctuated by the whining of machines with flashing lights.

Their numbers have grown so great, and because they are people, they will only continue to grow and collide and quarrel, while their world remains a small tumbling stone suspended in the stars.

And as they grew, as they built their towers larger and larger, they had lost their sight of where they belong.

There are no gods anymore, or else, they’ve been driven into hiding, and the Enchantress understands why.

People seem to no longer make things with their hands, but with these strange machines that repulse and terrify the Enchantress as much as they fascinate her. It’s these machines that make them bold, that make them do everything faster. Now, they can move quickly, communicate quickly, learn quickly. They won’t be so easily controlled.

She doesn’t like what the world has become. She wants to go back. She wants to go home.

But that’s impossible. For all that she can do, she can’t turn back time, only cheat it as she leaps from one body into the next.

But she can bring pieces of her world into this one.

Perhaps there can be some good from this. The gods are missing. There’s no one to contest her when she makes her claim. She may not be woven of the same divine cloth as they are, but she’s surely old and powerful enough. She'd had the following. She demanded sacrifice and tribute as they did, but she's far better than them. She’d had to earned her place among them over many centuries, written her name on their temples in the blood of slain nonbelievers, while they'd simply winked into being from congealed stardust drawn together by the power of belief, and taken their gilded seats without question. She's a true god. Truer than them. 

She understands that it will be much harder to reestablish her rule, to find her heart and her brother. The people will resist, because that’s what people do, they defy their nature and their place in the world, and they need to be punished greatly for their pride.

But with the machines, they now have the means to do it, and the Enchantress will never allow anyone to force her back into that hole in the ground.

So she has to understand them first. Maybe she can learn something new, something to add to her spells.

Spells. She needs to cast one. She needs to locate her brother and her heart. But spells of that sort require power that she does not have. She’d need blood to account for the absence of her heart. She’ll have to make do with understanding the machines first. Then, she’ll gather some.

In a flash of squirming black smoke tentacles, she reluctantly returns to June Moone’s strange home, and sets to work tracing her marks on the walls. She dismantles every machine in sight and lays out the pieces, working until the rain stops and the sun has risen, ignoring the way her eyelids leaden and her body begins to ache from fatigue.

She’s so enthralled in the whirling of the tiny gears inside a particularly fascinating object June Moone calls a clock, all working together to perform so simple a function, that she doesn’t notice the shrill unnatural whine that she’d heard from a distance far below hours before. It echoes through the streets outside, drawing closer and closer until she thinks her ears might start to bleed, clapping her hands over them and wincing.

There are shadows outside her door, peering into the windows past the hangings of cloth that cover it.

The Enchantress goes rigid as she hears a rough voice crying out, and she allows herself to become utterly untouchable, melting through the walls as the door smashes open.

She emerges in the rooms of a strange person’s house, connected to June Moone’s, and a group of people are gathered at the door, peering and chattering like squirrels as they watch the invasion of June Moone’s house from a safe distance.

How revolting.

The Enchantress doesn’t have time to humble them, she has a territory to defend. She has a ritual to perform, a heart to find, a brother to set free.

And how perfect is this? She needs blood, doesn’t she?

The Enchantress snatches a large, serrated knife from a block of wood in a room with food spread carelessly about. Really, these people are _stupid_ as well. Why aren’t they worried about attracting vermin?

She runs her fingers along the edge, admiring the quality, and then dissolves into a cloud of black dust, slipping through the minuscule cracks in their wall and back into the darkness of June’s home.

There are two of them, scanning the rooms with probing beams of light, nervously calling out to one another and to June Moone (Do they know her?), whispering into little buzzing black boxes as they explore the wreckage. They’ve closed the door.

The Enchantress flashes into place, poised on the ceiling, trembling with anticipation. It's been far too long since she's killed.

The light from one of the searching beams finds the prints she'd left on the walls, and swoops upwards, making the blade flash.

She hears him let out an utterance of surprise, and he stares up, directly into her eyes.

In spite of everything, she feels her lips curl up in the beginnings of a smile.

True gods require blood, and she can’t wait to shed it.


	3. deemed and delivered a crime

He needs to figure this out.

Soon, before they get to the house. They’re already in the city now, and the streets have been cleared for the unmarked van he and his men are crouched in the back of. The drive to the house will be quick, so he’s running out of time.

Colonel Rick Flag sighs, and flips back to the beginning of the manilla folder for the third time. Something here has to give him some kind of insight as to what he’s about to lead his men into, and he _can’t_ tell them nothing.

You don’t just call him in the middle of the night, fly him in from Texas, and hand him a team of Tier One military shooters to arrest just any murderer. You don’t just _not tell_ the man overseeing her arrest what he’s going to be facing.

Something’s going on here.

He rubs his eyelids, and blinks away the little bits of winking focus at the edge of his vision. Rick had only gotten about four hours of sleep before he’d been awakened, and he can’t let it affect his performance.

He adjusts his cap, and dives back into the information. Everything known about the woman he’s on his way to arrest, and he still thinks there’s something missing.

Dr. June Moone _(Wow, Mom and Dad. Great going on the naming. Real original. Here's to getting your kid beat up on the playground)_. Twenty-six years old. Oh, would you look at that, her birthday’s next week. Good for her. She can celebrate it in prison. Maybe he’ll send her a card.

Her ID photo shows a pretty woman with sunstreaked brown hair tied back so tightly, he can almost imagine her scalp coming away with it. She has very thick eyebrows and round glasses, and looks kind of like an overworked high school librarian. The only thing halfway unique about her is that her earlobes are pierced twice. Moone is cold and disinterested in the photo, but that doesn’t necessarily say anything about her personality. Nobody’s happy when they’re at the DMV.

Dr. Moone doesn’t have any social media, so he has to rely on newspaper clippings and official documents for any insight into her behavior.

And so far, there really isn’t much.

No criminal record _(_ _yet_ _,_ those charges are still pending, but it isn’t like she’d hurt anybody), not even a parking ticket.

No money problems whatsoever. Not even a single student loan, thanks to a trust fund. Aside from tuition, basic expenses, rent on a nice townhouse, and funding for her expedition, there's nothing questionable about her spending habits. Aside from the foreign art pieces and artifact replicas she seems to really like, but the pieces and transactions were legal and legitimate. Nothing to see there.

No known affiliation with any terrorist or radical groups, no gangs or smuggling rings.

No affiliation with anybody, actually. Dr. Moone strikes him as a person who's quite lonely, or else, extremely introverted. She doesn’t interact with _anyone._ Back when she’d had a job, her interactions had been restricted to fellow doctors and archaeologists. He understands. He mostly keeps to himself too, aside from his fellow soldiers and, when he can get away with it, the occasional call to Tatsu (But Rick isn’t lonely, he’s _focused)._

But aside from that, there’s just _nothing._

No husband, no wife. No kids.

No boyfriends or girlfriends.

No friends.

The only child of two well-off parents who’d been model citizens themselves.

They’d home-schooled her until she was seventeen  _(Well, hey, silver lining: No one was beating her up on the playground)_ , when she’d left for college. Since then, they hadn’t contacted their daughter aside from a sprinkling of occasional phone calls. The family likely hadn’t been together in close to ten years.

 _Like yours,_ a voice at the back of his head says, but he silences it. That’s just a coincidence. He’s projecting. 

The rift in the Moone family doesn’t seem to have been brought on by anything in particular. It’s something, but it’s not significant. Still, he pockets the information in the back of his mind.

She’s brilliant. Seventeen years old, and accepted to the University of Metropolis’s archaeology program, where she’d buried herself for nine years, doing nothing but study until she’d graduated, years ahead of her class. _Summa cum laude,_ just like him.

Wait, _Metropolis._ Is that it? She’d been in the city during the Black Zero Event, but… no.

No, she wouldn't have had anything to do with that. That was all the Kryptonians. She was just an ordinary person caught in the middle of the attack, just like everyone else. And she hadn’t even _been_ in the middle of the attack. Moone had been hiding in a basement in Chinatown for the bulk of the event, a claim made bulletproof by many witnesses and CCTV recordings.

The event didn’t seem to leave her with any long-term psychological damage. While an unprecedented number of people were fleeing the city, Moone had volunteered to stay and assist in searching the downtown ruins for anyone still trapped in the rubble (Another coincidence. He'd been there too, with a number of other soldiers doing the same thing). And when it had all been said and done, she’d brushed the dust off her shoulders and carried on with her life.

And what a life it was going it be. In Rick’s opinion, Moone was on a track guaranteed to succeed.

Could that be it?

Dr. Moone is twenty-six years old. Already, she has a PhD. She’d gained her first research grant less than half a year after receiving her title. Already, she’s rented her first home in Boston, close to the rest of the doctors who were going to be assisting her. Already, she’s published research, and gained the attention of the much older, more distinguished professors and archaeologists who’d become her colleagues.

Said colleagues now have nothing but disdain for her, and he expects the BPD, CIA and FBI are being flooded with calls from archaeologists and university alumni distancing themselves from their former protegee.

A woman that young, with all that expectation on her shoulders? A woman who’d crashed and burned at the first opportunity to live up to it?

She’d been their pet project, in all likelihood. And then they’d given her too much leash, and she’d fucked it.

To some extent, he can relate. Sky-high expectations had been placed on him as well. He also lives for his job. But when he’d been cut loose and left in the middle of a battlefield, he hadn’t just succeeded, he’d _thrived._

He’s been in the army half his life, and is one of their top-ranked soldiers. The nation had honored his service by bending the rules enough to make him the youngest colonel in the country. Rick isn’t even out of his thirties, and he’s already eclipsed his own father in prestige.

No. He needs to stop drawing up these coincidences. He’s here to lead these men to arrest her. He shouldn’t be relating to her.

Besides, he isn’t a murderer. He’d done the things he’d done under orders, to protect his country. He feels no guilt. It had always been the right thing to do, in every situation he’d been sent into.

But Moone? She is.

Her motive is perfectly standard. She’s the golden girl gone wrong. Just like one of those cheesy true crime documentaries he watches more than he'd like to admit.

But her means?

She _can’t_ be responsible for the murders of at least four policemen, and an entire SWAT team.

How the hell does a girl with no combat experience, who looks like she weighs ninety pounds soaking wet take out a dozen people in a few hours, without a single bullet fired? How does she scare the Boston police department so terribly they called in the CIA (Not the FBI, the _CIA_ ) after just one SWAT team gets sent in? What did they see?

What aren't they telling him? _Why_ aren’t they telling him?

And why is he here? He’s already making connections between himself and the target, developing a bias. That’s downright _dangerous._ They have to know.

The stern, dark woman sitting across from him has done nothing more than hand him the file. Whenever he raises a question, she answers with stony silence and alarmingly sharp eyes that are fixed on only him, even though he isn’t the only person in the van. His mind had been fighting off the fog of sleep when she’d first introduced herself, so he can’t even remember her name. He doubts she’ll tell him it again.

Rick sighs, and decides to put aside his own concerns. All that matters is he knows what he’s dealing with.

From the brief, non-descriptive sentences in the file, he knows dozens of 911 calls are attributed to this case, starting a few weeks ago from her neighbors, occasional calls that had likely been complaints about noise or strange behavior. And then, shortly after midnight today, there’d been a sudden spike in frequency, coming from dozens of locations all across Boston.

But the reports indicate that she hasn’t left her home in close to two weeks. She’d let the water and electric bills pile up until the city shut off her utilities, and her rent is long overdue. Her prescriptions haven't been filled in over a month.

There’s something here he’s not seeing. Rick rereads again.

There are dozens of glossy photos of Dr. Moone leaving the grocery store, the public library, and some dinky little New Age shop that sold incense and strange remedies, but those had been dated a while ago, well before she’d shut herself up in her townhouse and never come out.

So what? She was hungry. She likes to read. She’s experimenting with being a hippie. She’s into… indoor gardening? Those pots of grass she carried in from her car are, as far as the report indicates, just a kind of grass. Nothing she could smoke or weaponize.

But there has to be _something_.

Terrorism crosses his mind again. Is that why the FBI and CIA are involved? Is that why they've called him in? Are an entire cell of people hiding out in her house? Is that why she hadn’t left for so long? Could the policemen have been killed by _-no, that’s not right. They’d have seen it._

Dr. Moone has been under constant surveillance since her return from the expedition, which makes him wonder. Rick knows the government keeps a close eye on it’s citizens, maybe closer than they’re comfortable with, but why _her_ in particular? The criminal charges are only pending, and they’re nonviolent, and Moone’s always adhered to the law before. 

Besides, she’d been even more isolated since her return.

Moone hasn’t spoken to anyone in person aside from a few words exchanged at the stores she’d frequented, and though interviews are certainly being conducted, he doubts it’ll amount to anything more than small talk. The phone calls she’d made were to her colleagues, and they’d died off very quickly when she’d been shunned. She’d sent no emails whatsoever.

So whatever _it_ is isn’t recent.

But her early life had been squeaky clean. Even the Black Zero Event proved she’d been nothing more than a model citizen.

So Peru’s the only option left. Whatever’s happening with her, it must have started there. What had happened?

He flips back again, and rereads.

When he’d first scanned the words, he’d chalked it up to absolute incompetence.

According to the report published by her colleagues, Dr. Moone had simply abandoned the group, wandering off in the middle of her own expedition to explore a side tunnel. She’d ignored their calls for her to return, and fallen into an undiscovered chamber of the cave. Her colleagues reported hearing laughter when they’d been calling for her, so Moone had clearly been aware of her actions, maybe even thought it was some kind of sick prank.

They’d found her sitting in a grave, contaminating its contents, unconscious and covered in mud. She’d broken a potentially priceless artifact, and afterward had probably slipped and hit her head. She herself was recorded admitting that it was a completely irresponsible thing to do, and that she’d been attacked by some kind of animal in the cave, but it was after the fact.

Moone had been airlifted to the nearest hospital, then immediately sent home, and banned from ever returning to the site.

Maybe she’d been approached then, when she was concussed and vulnerable to suggestion. Maybe before that, somewhere on the way to the caves. Was she just a terrible scientist, or had something happened to her that changed her perspective, made her willing to completely destroy her career? Or had it just been an accident?

Regardless, Moone’s professional career is over. She’ll never be allowed back into Peru, let alone on another expedition. She might lose her PhD. She could even serve some time behind bars if the charges for destruction of the artifact go through.

 _Even more proof for the motive,_ he’d thought. Twenty-six years old, her whole life breaking and falling to pieces around her. The career she’d devoted her life to up in flames. Her entire social circle roughly excluding her from their conversations, and even taking her name off the research. Being so overcome with shame that she’d refused to take her medication, culminating into some kind of breakdown.

Rick feels genuinely sorry for her. If he loses his standing within the military, or word of his bungled ops leaks out, he doesn’t know what he’d do.

Nope, he's not going down that path again. _Focus._

Her motive still doesn’t explain the calls from places she couldn’t possibly be.

Or the screenshots of CCTV footage showing Dr. Moone in locations all across the city, wearing some kind of filthy black wig, and covered head-to-toe in dirt. (He’d first thought of the first images of a figure hovering in midair as too distant to make out the individual, but he can’t deny that it’s her anymore, and his excuse of it being some kind of viral prank that’ll appear on the news tonight is flimsier than wet tissue paper.)

Or how she’d even been able to kill those men in the first place, when it’s impossible for anyone to have made it into her house without the cameras seeing.

Or the sudden, powerful surge of electricity that had crippled the entire block she’d been living on, with her house as the epicenter.

Or the presence of the CIA agent whose eyes are burning holes into his skin.

Rick rubs his temples, exhaling sharply through his nose. He needs to _figure this out._ He’ll be leading his men into a situation that he can’t make sense of, and though he knows he can do it, if he can avoid it, he will. He knows what happens when they don’t know what to do, and it never ends well.

He snaps the manilla folder shut, and gets ready to flip it over and start again.

Then the logo on the cover catches his eye.

He hadn’t given it any mind at first, just assumed it’d been Boston’s seal, or the CIA, or the FBI.

But it’s none of those things.

It’s _ARGUS._

Rick feels his face go cold, and the woman sitting across from him gives him a cold, tight-lipped smile at his expression.

A metahuman.

Dr. Moone is a _metahuman._

 

* * *

 

Rick catches the door just shy of slamming into the wall as he swings it open, the eviction notice taped to the center fluttering as he crosses the threshold of the neat brick townhouse with his men a step behind him.

The police on scene had gassed the house hours ago, and according to their thermal cameras, Moone had been the only body moving prior to the gassing. The latest image he’d seen was her in a bathroom upstairs, and she’s been there for the past few hours, presumably still unconscious, or at the least, completely out of it.

He still doesn’t want to take any chances. He shouldn't be here, but he is. So he has to make this work.

As he enters the house, the stench hits him like a punch in the face. Rick and his entire team begin coughing, pressing their sleeves to their noses.

It’s like nothing he’s ever smelled before. The air, thick and steamy as a sauna, heavy and rancid with a dozen nasty smells all congealed and coming at him like a living wave. Incense mixed with the sickly sweet stench of spoiled food and the sour tang of blood and rotting flesh.

Rick starts breathing through his mouth and blinks, adjusting to the dim interior, inspecting it through the sights of his gun.

The city had shut off Moone’s power several days ago, and many of the curtains are drawn, but there’s enough light for him to see, even though it’s early in the morning and the sky is flat and gray with the remnants of last night’s storm.

And what he sees is chaos.

Eight bodies in the front hall, all wearing SWAT uniforms, their helmets scattered around the room. Their necks had been wrenched around at sharp angles, and strange symbols are carved into their bare foreheads, painted over with black ink. _Oh, what, she’s a Satanist too?_

The upside-down cross smeared haphazardly on the wall to his left (in something that Rick sincerely hopes is just mud) would probably say,  _yes._

Rick feels something in his gut lurch as he glances around the first floor. Just what the hell can this woman _do?_

He and his men pick their way around a scattering of furniture concentrated around a home office, cushions torn to shreds of fabric and filling that spill out across the floor, mingling with dozens of scattered stalks of dead grass.

Rick motions for several of them to check the basement, while the others examine the first floor. They can’t be too careful, and the voice buzzing in his ear will tell them if Moone moves at all.

When Rick peeks inside the office, he sees the floor carpeted with pages torn from books with broken spines, and a broken novelty piggy bank spilling pennies across the ground. The window is shattered, with dark fingerprints streaking the dusty glass.

Nothing else though, apart from a collection of objects that look like they’ve been dismantled for their parts, laid out methodically into little piles based on shape and size all around the room.

_Was she building a bomb?_

He steps further into the hall, feeling the sweat stick his windbreaker to the back of his neck, and his boots crunch over shattered glass and stick to the floor, damp and smeary with dark mud and drying blood.

All the light bulbs seem to have been torn from their sockets, reduced to little piles of broken glass. Did she break them herself, or had it been the power surge?

Rick peeks into the kitchen momentarily, before immediately doubling back. The counter tops are carpeted with disease, moldy crusts of fuzzy whitish slime sprouting from dozens of packages of ruined food. The staticky cloud of flies gathered around a collection of rotten bananas immediately prompts him to close the door and bury his face in his sleeve, struggling to keep his lunch down.

God, if this is how he's reacting to her house, what's he going to do when he sees _her?_

He shouldn't be here.

He leans his hand against the wall, and _-what the shit?_

Rags of tacky floral wallpaper are torn in a way that suggests the woman had been raking into them with her fingernails, but that’s not the disturbing thing.

It’s the spots of mud on them. Dark splotches shaped exactly like smeary hand and footprints, trailing up the walls and across the ceiling, zigzagging across the hall from room to room. Once in a while, the trail is interrupted by a scribble or two, but he's drawing a blank as to what they're supposed to be. Too geometric to be a language, too sloppy to be a drawing. 

He follows one trail into the living room, where several of his other men are examining an overturned television and a heap of brass and crystal that had once been a chandelier, the others watching a pair of police officers’ corpses warily, like they’re about to get up and start moving. Would it really be such a surprise if they did?

“Anything?” he mutters in the ear of one of the men he’d sent into the basement. He’s examining one of the officers.

 _Officer Jimenez, one of the first responders,_ Rick recalls from the briefing. Not that it’s easy to tell. Jimenez’s face is split open down the middle, covered with clotting blood, chunks of skull protruding from the cheeks. The handle of a kitchen knife is buried in what’s left of his nose, and the tip of the blade is buried in the hardwood.

_Jesus Christ._

Dr. Moone is _strong._ They have to _move,_ before she wakes up.

“No sir. All clear.”

“Good,” Rick motions to the men, “Let’s get it done.”

They take the steps three at a time, skirting around another pair of mangled police officers and a pair of shattered glasses halfway up the stairs.

As he reaches the second floor, Rick begins to squirm. It feels like static is trailing along the underside of his skin and the air takes on an incredibly tense feeling, like the house itself is holding its breath.

Right there. The second door to the left. The one with the pale blue light leaking from the crack under the door.

The bathroom, where Dr. Moone was probably enjoying a lovely bath, washing away the residue of her massacre before the gas had set in.

 _Enjoy it while you can,_ he thinks, hearing sloshing from behind the door, and an unintelligible word in a whispered voice.

An electronic voice hisses in his ear, confirming what he already knows _\- she’s awake-_ before it cuts to a sharp burst of static. The entire house hums with electricity, and outside, he can hear startled shouts as a series of car alarms begin blaring. The blue light immediately vanishes.

She’s awake.

His gut twists like an eel, but Rick ignores it, swallowing the sense of mounting dread.

Now. It has to be _now,_ before she gets the chance to recover. No hesitation.

Rick raises his pistol, smashes the door open, and charges.

 

* * *

 

The bathroom is almost as hot as an oven, clouds of steam coating the mirrors and windows and pale marbled walls in fog, and floating along the ceiling in billowing translucent clouds that roll out of the doorway and down the hall.

The crawling sensation under his skin is gone, and he turns to face the bathtub, as the rest of his men crowd in around him, firearms trained on the woman sitting inside it.

Rick is taken sharply aback when he sees the massive, misshapen pentagram scrawled on the wall in black ink.

“The _fuck?”_

 _“Shit,”_ one of his men mutters, and begins hissing rushed instructions into his earpiece mic.

He didn’t expect _this._  

Dr. Moone isn’t taking a luxurious bubble bath in the blood of her victims. She isn’t a cold, calculating mass murderer.

She’s trembling like a leaf in brackish, filthy water up to her neck, surrounded by stalks of dying grass that seem to be growing from the bathtub itself. She’s been in the water for so long that the roots of her mousy hair have dried, while the rest of it hangs in soaked, trailing ropes.

Dr. Moone’s chest is rising and falling at an alarmingly fast rate, and the ripples in the opaque water around her reveal that her wrinkled hands are clenching and unclenching, grabbing at her bruised knees.

Her haunting face is chalk-white, blue-tinted lips parted in a hollow, soundless moan. There’s a flash of white as her eyes roll forwards in their sockets, two blank green discs with pronounced, bruise-colored bags hanging beneath them.

She’s just staring at an empty space right in front of her, lower lip twitching, blinking rapidly, making soft, nervous little squeaks. It seems to Rick like she’s trying to make sense of something that can’t be explained, like she’s trying to hold herself back from launching into a fit of absolute hysteria.

Slowly, the shine returns to her eyes as she bites the corner of her lip until it draws a bead of blood. Dr. Moone closes her eyes for a moment, and Rick wonders how long she’s gone without sleep. Then she opens them, and immediately focuses on him, like she’s finally realized she’s not alone in the room.

Her eyes are wide and burning with horror. When she speaks, it’s with words so soft and tremulous he can barely hear them at all.

_“Help me.”_

Something very small in his chest just breaks at the words, and Rick immediately understands that he’s too attached already. She’s a killer. She’s a metahuman. He’s here to arrest her, and he’s already excusing her behavior in his mind. _Oh, she couldn’t have possibly done it, because she’s like me. She’s too delicate, never mind all the shit I’ve already seen. She couldn’t possibly be a good actress, she’s an innocent victim. It’s all an act, and she'll drop it any second. Don't lose focus._

Still, there’s something cold and sharp twisting in his chest that stings as Dr. Moone takes his outstretched hand in hers, and collapses in his arms as he helps her out of the bathtub.

He keeps a tight grip on her, pulling off his windbreaker to cover her with as the soaked bathrobe gathered at her waist drops to the ground in a sodden heap, and he’s disturbed by how thin she is, how easily he can feel the spaces in between her ribs beneath his fingers.

When the rest of the police thunder into the house and swarm Dr. Moone, he’s almost grateful. He’s the wrong person to handle this, and any number of things could have ended very badly. He shouldn’t be reacting so viscerally at seeing this thin woman rushed away in handcuffs, weeping as a black bag is placed over her head.

He shouldn’t be staring after the heavy armored truck that looks more like a tank as it rushes away down the evacuated street, escorted by a thick line of police cars.

He shouldn’t be watching the distant crowd of reporters, bystanders, and ejected residents fighting the sea of policemen decked out in riot gear, listening to the distant buzz of helicopters circling overhead like dragonflies, wondering if there’s still something else he isn’t seeing yet.

He certainly shouldn’t be listening to the dark woman from ARGUS, getting into a van with her to follow Dr. Moone.

But he is.

 

* * *

 

Dr. Moone is in a cold, gray room, handcuffed to a bar attached to the wall, shifting uncomfortably in her chair as she spreads her hands and feet as far as the chains will let her move them. The fluorescent lighting washes over her pale skin, illuminating the shadows under her eyes, making her look alarmingly corpse-like. Her hair is dry, and hangs in limp brown waves. She’s had her hands bound since she entered the van, and they won’t allow her to remove the cuffs to tie it back, so she constantly twitches her head to toss her hair out of her face.

She’s dressed in a bright orange prison uniform that’s several sizes too large for her, and constantly switches from squinting at the woman, and squinting at the camera he’s watching her through.

Twice, she’s asked for glasses. Three times, she's asked to go to the bathroom. Eight times, she's asked for a lawyer. Twelve times, she's asked if she can go home. So far, she's been ignored on all fronts, so after the first hour, her requests stop.

She needs to sleep and eat and take a decent shower, and use the toilet and _go home._  Nothing about this feels right. Not seeing her here, not reacting to her the way that he is, not feeling absolutely torn about what to do with her. She's a murderer, they say, and usually, that's enough for him to carry out his orders and then move on with his life. But he just _knows_ they're wrong. There's something massive happening here that just doesn't make any sense yet.

But he's a soldier. It's not his place to question orders. He carries them out, because it's in the name of a just cause. That's all there is to it.

(There's nothing just about keeping a terrified, scrawny woman in a room for the better part of a day, ignoring all her Constitutional rights, but it's all about keeping America safe, right?)

He’s lost count of the number of times he’s asked the agent why he’s here, after signing dozens of forms with obtuse language that essentially accounts to him being completely unable to share what he sees here today with anyone else. That's fine, he's done it before. _But why is he here?_

In the end, she just decided to leave him alone in the dark, narrow room across the hall from the one they’re keeping Dr. Moone in.

Rick is under strict orders to observe the interrogation on the monitor in front of him, but not to leave. They want him to see this, because he’s going to play a direct role in whatever comes next.

Maybe it’s a good thing. Even though all his training is telling him otherwise, he really doesn’t want to leave Dr. Moone alone. There’s something about her that doesn’t feel right, something telling him that she might just be a pawn in this. Someone else is pulling the strings.

And he knows now that the attachment he’s feeling is something they must have planned. They want him here, watching her, feeling something for her, even if it’s just a small shred of empathy for another human being who's apart from everyone else, with the weight of the world on their shoulders.

But he can’t leave the room. He can’t talk to her, at least not yet. He’s just sitting here, watching and listening, hoping for the best. And it doesn’t look good. There’s no way this will end well for her, not after what she’s done. There’s certainly nothing he can do about it.

On the bright side, they’ve given him a large bucket of drumsticks from KFC.

And, now that the agent’s reintroduced herself to Dr. Moone, he remembers her name.

Amanda Waller.

When he’d heard it, he’d done a double take, almost choked on his last drumstick, and felt his heart begin hammering a hole in his chest.

He’s heard whispers about her for years, though he’s never seen her in person before today (From what he's heard, he'd always envisioned her as either a very thin, beautiful woman, or a very fat, terrifying one. The real thing is somewhere in between, but no less intimidating). The woman has quite the reputation, with enough skeletons in her closet to make Rick thankful he hasn’t pissed her off yet, and desperate to avoid doing so in the future.

Right now, her sights are on Dr. Moone. He doesn’t envy her position at all, on the receiving end of an interrogation that’s lasted hours already. Moone looks like she’s ready to drop dead, but somehow, Agent Waller’s gotten her to start talking. She’s already deep into a discussion of how she’d killed the men.

Or, in Dr. Moone’s mind, how someone else did.

She’d told a very elaborate story about some kind of strange possession, about witches and being trapped in her own body. On any other day, Rick would have laughed at it, chalked it up as the worse defense he’s ever seen, and gone about his day.

But now?

Now that ARGUS is involved, _now that The Wall is involved,_ everything is possible.

“And how did this... _witch_ take control of you?”

“What…” It sounds like gravel is rattling around inside Moone’s throat. “What do you mean, ‘take control of me?’”

“I’m saying, Dr. Moone,” Waller says, “Is there _anything_ you can recall that might have triggered it? The witch taking control of your body?”

Moone stares at the table for a long time, and frowns, tightening her lips together.

Then she mumbles something, and Rick leans closer to the speaker.

“Would you say that again, Dr. Moone? Louder.”

“I said her name.”

“She has a name?”

“Yes.”

“Would you be willing to tell me it?”

“No, I… I can’t say it, because… Because when I say it, she’ll come out, and _you don’t want that.”_

Waller turns to a fresh page in her notepad, and offers Moone her pen.

“Can you write it down?”

A pause. Then a tentative nod.

Agent Waller watches her scribble a line onto the page, then she nervously rolls the pen and paper across the table, back into Waller’s hands.

“The Enchantress,” Waller reads, and Dr. Moone visibly flinches, collapsing on herself and screwing her eyes shut. There’s a tangible weight to the words, and Rick grips the end of the table until his knuckles turn white, expecting the lights to flash and the shadows of the room to come alive and attack the women, but nothing happens.

He was wrong about her, he realizes, as all the pieces begin to fall into place. The 'animal presence' she'd described in the cave, the pentagrams, the prints on the wall, the images of Moone with different hair and clothing and strangely reflective eyes. The word he'd heard whispered in the bathroom right before he'd charged in.

He’d written the woman off as a killer, but she’s had no control in this. She’d had no control over anything at all, and now her life is over. Rick can’t imagine what that must be like.

“Can she see us right now?”

“I…” Moone frowns, staring at her fingertips as she runs them along the edge of the table. “I don’t think so. She’s tired.”

She looks at Waller uncertainly, waiting for a cue to continue, and then elaborates, “It comes and goes, when she can see and hear through me. Sometimes… it’s like… she’s right in the front of my head, and I have to be careful about what I’m saying or doing, because she’ll start messing with me, like she’s going to spill out and take over. But it takes a lot of work, so she’s usually just sitting there, watching and listening. Sometimes she talks to me, but it’s usually in different voices or some language I don’t know. But after she does try something, it’s like she’s off somewhere else, behind this… I don't know, a fog? Like right now.”

Waller nods, her fingers clasped together.

“But she’s always here,” Moone adds, propping her elbows up on the table and burying her face in her hands. “And I can’t get rid of her.”

Waller regards her for a long while. The angle of the camera doesn’t allow Flag to see her face, but the corners of her cheeks are turned upwards.

Is she _smiling?_

“Dr. Moone?” Waller’s voice is level, even slightly friendly. But he knows better. He's heard people like her use that tone before, and it never ends well.

She lifts her face out of her hands, staring at Waller through her veil of mussed hair.

“You're a smart woman, so I assume you’re well aware that your life is over. No one aside from me will believe your story, no matter how true it may be. And we’re going to keep it that way, because if those people crowded around your house know what _we_ know, they’ll burn you at the stake.”

Moone lets out a choked sob.

Rick swallows his discomfort. He’s heard far worse than this, _done_ far worse than this. 

He might end up doing worse than this very soon. There's a reason why he's here, and as this interview drags on, he's starting to worry about what it is. Because if it's what he thinks it is, he'll do it. He doesn't want to, but he can't lie to himself. He will. 

“So, for your own protection, the rest of the world is going to see this as a thwarted terrorist attack, and _you_ are a key witness, removed from the public eye and placed under protection until further notice.”

Further notice meaning that Dr. Moone will likely never live her own life again. Assuming that Waller's being genuine, and she certainly isn't, Moone will only be allowed to act in her own name when it suits them. There are worse things. 

_“What?”_

“Now, that’s just the public. The government knows the truth. The minute you leave this building, you’ll be arrested and sent to prison without a trial or any publicity.”

“Oh my _God,”_ Moone whispers.

Rick rubs his temples with his fingertips.

She’s fucked. Whatever hell she's about to fall into, he's probably going to follow. Shit, he might even be the one to send her there. 

This is probably going to end in a lot of physical pain for her to feel and a lot of emotional pain for him to suppress.

“Given the  _abilities_ you’ve displayed so far, you’ll end up spending the rest of your short little life in a _very_ special place made for criminals just like you. And you know, I don’t think you’ll last long there.”

Holy shit, _is he taking her to Site Bravo?_

Dr. Moone gasps as she crumples into a sobbing heap on the table, burying her face in her arms.

For a few minutes, no one moves.

Rick is transfixed by the scene in front of him, his mind a mess of conflicting emotions.

Waller finally slides her hand across the table and grips Dr. Moone’s forearm firmly.

“Now,” Her voice is warmer, almost motherly, “I don’t want that to happen to you. In fact, I think it’s entirely unnecessary. You can be of great value to us, provided that you cooperate. I know a way to help you get out of this situation, and free you from your burden, but you’ll _have_ to listen to me, and do _exactly_ as I say. Do you understand?”

 _What's the catch, Waller?_   He wants to say.  _Where do I fit into this? What are you really doing?_

Dr. Moone’s cries go quiet. She takes a series of long, deep breaths, nodding to herself.

Then she straightens, brushing the matted hair out of her face, wiping the streams of snot and tears off her face with the back of her wrist. Dr. Moone meets Amanda Waller's gaze with eyes that are exhausted and reddened, but utterly calm. She seems to understand the gravity of the situation she's been caught in, all the hidden implications in Waller's proposal. She knows that she's making a deal with the devil.

“I do.”


	4. darling, down and down i go

Two hours after she meets Amanda Waller, June signs away her life.

She scribbles her name on the dotted line again and again and again. Page after page of official documentation signing away everything, because, really, there isn’t any other option.

She’s not a person anymore. She’s a puppet.

She’s been one for months, and the most she can do to free herself is hand her strings off to someone else. June can only hope that these people will find a way to make sure the witch doesn’t get out.

Because they don’t want to get rid of her. If they had, they’d have obliged her when she asked them to remove her vocal cords. Because if she can’t talk at all, she can’t say the word. And if she can’t say her name, the witch can’t get out. They’ll be stuck together forever. The witch can’t hurt anyone. Sure, she might drive June insane, but that was worth it in her mind. What’s one person who knows at least to some degree what she’s dealing with, compared to limitless others who have no idea?

But they didn’t. They’d listened to her request, and then nothing had happened.

So they want to use her for something.

June spends hours in the back of a van, blindfolded, as she’s taken to another location. From the hours she spends trying not to heave from carsickness, she guesses she’s in another state, but she never sees the outside of the building she’s driven into.

June is ushered out of the car in a dimly-lit parking garage, and through a twisting maze of identical off-white hallways. 

She’s shown to a sterile, blank room that reminds her of a prison cell. When she's not lying on her cot, staring at the wall, she spends her time in and out of a series of extremely strenuous and violating psychological and medical evaluations that, for the most part, occur in her room.

Some of them seem perfectly logical, like the interviews about her medications and her illnesses. It feels good to say, “No, apparently I’m not schizophrenic. I’m just possessed. Honest mistake. So you can take Risperidone off my list of meds. I think the side effects are making me really fidgety.”

And others feel pointless. The gynecological exam in particular. What, do they think she’ll give birth to the Antichrist?

Not an inch of her is untouched, not a movement she makes is unmonitored. But it’s fair enough, she guesses. She has no idea what she’s dealing with. Neither do they. If they learn something, there’s a chance they might share it with her.

And June is starting to live for the rattling inside her skull whenever she undergoes any sort of test where her body is examined.

It’s relieving, feeling the witch’s panic. She flutters around like a moth, beating weakly at the insides of June’s eyelids, and she finds it incredibly reassuring that the monster inside her can still feel fear.

She might be content to stay here forever, where the witch is harmless. What’s worse, being puppeted from within, or having your strings twisted around from outside?

But it isn’t anything more than temporary. Because of course it is. It _always_ is.

Late one afternoon, five days after her arrival, she’s brought her into a beige room with a selection of photographs in a neat manila folder. A man and a woman who isn’t Amanda Waller are waiting there, to tell her what comes next.

She’s to live in a secluded house not far outside D.C., with a soldier she’s met before. The man with the hat and the goatee and the kind eyes who’d helped her out of the bathtub and wrapped her in his jacket. He’ll be constantly in her company, a bodyguard of sorts. Only, he’ll report to Waller whenever she does something she shouldn’t, or the witch starts creeping out.

They’ll be alone together, unable to leave the house and yard without permission. Everything from packages to groceries will be delivered to their house, and left on the driveway, and they can’t retrieve them until whoever drops them off has left.

It doesn’t sound too bad to June. Avoiding people has always been easy for her. Not talking, even easier. But in order to make sure the witch doesn’t creep back into her conscious thoughts, June has to commit to a life of constantly double-checking herself and her behavior. She can’t trust herself anymore, so she needs the soldier to watch her. As long as he isn’t a creep, she won’t have a problem. If he is... that's drifting into territory June doesn't want to explore.

Everything will be paid for by the government, in particular, the branch that’s watching over her.

 _ARGUS,_ like the myths June had read over and over as a child, and then again in university.

Odysseus’s loyal dog, who dies right after his master returns home.

The king of the Greek city of Argos, who renamed it after himself.

The man who built the Argo under Athena’s watchful eye.

The hundred-eyed giant tasked by Hera with keeping one of Zeus’s mistresses under lock and key.

_But which myth is the name inspired by, and what does that say about them?_

When June asks when she’s going to leave, they tell her, “Now.”

Into another glossy, unmarked car she goes. Hours of sitting opposite a frowning marshal, unable to see out the tinted windows, until she’s ushered out and into the dense August heat. June squints in the grating sunlight, and slides her glasses back up her nose.

The military-issued sweats she’s wearing are sagging off her arms and bunching around her ankles, and June feels like she’s wilting into them as she leans away from the marshal's hand.

She keeps her arms folded tightly around the large, hot pink duffel bag she’d been given when she’d left, using it as a barrier between her torso and whatever’s next, like a kid hiding behind her favorite teddy bear. Inside are a handful of articles of clothing, a toothbrush, and a few odds and ends.

Everything else she owns is gone, boxed up and taken somewhere for examination by even more strangers in hazmat suits wearing sanitized latex gloves. She’ll probably never see any of her possessions again. Maybe they’ll resurface in some museum decades after her death, the personal effects of the woman who wasn’t strong enough to stop the monster inside her from burning a city to the ground.

They’ve allowed her to order a number of things, though, under observation at the facility. A new laptop (The best she can get, since after all, it’s isn’t _June_ who’s going to pay for it), a better drawing tablet, multiple pairs of glasses, an entire wardrobe of new clothing. They’ll probably arrive here eventually, but until then, she has the clothes on her back.

The soldier is already here, standing on the end of the driveway, waving off the van. He’s wearing that same stupid hat.

June takes small, measured steps up the driveway and comes to a stop in front of him, counting them as she goes. She avoids looking at him for too long. The bags under her eyes have only gotten larger, she knows, and her eyes feel like heavy lead balls rolling around in their sockets. No one should see her like this. No one should see her at all.

He probably thinks she’s terrified of him, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

June is afraid of herself, of the monster inside her that’s peering through her eyes with vested interest in their new surroundings. She doesn’t want her to hurt this man.

She squirms uncomfortably in the thick August heat, and quickly walks past _… what’s his name, Rick? Rick._ Rick Flag, the guy with the most patriotic name in the world, who’d probably been born to be a soldier.

She walks past him, shuffling into the house and sighing in relief as the cool air washes over her.

June keeps her bag clutched to her chest as she walks into the house, sneakers squeaking on impeccably clean hardwood floor. The silence prickles on the air like dust motes, slightly chopped by the distant humming of a ceiling fan.

She casts a quick glance at the pile of neatly dismantled boxes next to the door as she kicks her shoes off. He’d moved in earlier today, in all likelihood. From... Texas, if she’s reading the postmark right. _Explains the accent._

She’d first met him a week ago, and now he’s fully moved in. When did they decide that this was happening?

The house is small, but spotless. Every scrap of furniture brand new, the paint on the walls flawless, the pantry fully stocked (Jesus Christ, they’d been looking through her grocery bills too, because that’s _all_ the food she likes, even things she hasn't had in months), like it had never been lived in before. Probably hasn’t.

All the things on the shelves are probably Rick’s. Shelves filled with alphabetically-organized books, a collection of movies neatly arranged under the TV, a bag of golf clubs leaning neatly in a corner of the living room. _Yeah, like they'll let us leave the house for tee time._

There are cameras and bugs here somewhere, in the hidden crevices she isn’t yet seeing.

June isn’t stupid. There’s no way the soldier is the only measure they have for watching her. He can’t be with her every second of every day.

But June decides she won’t look for them. If she doesn’t know where they are, neither will the witch. And since she’s limited to looking through June’s eyes, she’ll never find them _(Until she takes control,_ June starts to think, before she bites her lip and forces her mind to switch directions).

She’s had someone constantly observing her for the past five months. She should be used to it by now, but she isn’t. And does it really matter if they’re listening, if they’re watching? This is what she’d signed her freedom away for. Someone observing her at all times, making sure the witch doesn’t hurt someone. She has no secrets anymore. She has no life anymore.

June hears the door close behind her, and she braces herself for a round of awkward conversation that she’d rather avoid.

He doesn’t try to talk, and she’s thankful as she shuffles deeper into the house.

Mechanically, she checks off everything. Living room to her left, kitchen to her right. Bathroom at the end of the hallway, bedrooms on either end. Closet with washing machine over there. Good? Good. That's all she needs to know.

The bare bedroom is hers. Or at least, it is now, June thinks as she walks in without a second look at Rick Flag, and closes the door behind her, carefully twisting the knob so it won’t make that jarring click sound as it glides shut.

June spends the next two hours rolling over again and again in an unfamiliar bed, wrapped in unfamiliar sheets, her tongue grinding like sandpaper along the insides of her teeth, mind wandering listlessly through the empty space around her.

She can’t think, she can’t cry, she can’t sleep.

Is this her life now? Wasting away, waiting for her next round of medical tests and psychological exams, until they decide to just kill her and be done with it? Lying here, trying not to scream, listening to the echoes of the witch’s laugh rumbling in her ears.

Because June just can’t ignore her anymore. She’d tried that. For weeks, she’d been denying the creeping cloud of dread that had settled in the back of her mind. It was just anxiety, she’d said again and again. Of course she’s anxious, she was humiliated and disgraced. Of course she’s thinking strange things, she was in a mental state of freefall after she'd taken a blow to the head and made a life-ruining mistake.

And then it had started to take shape, moving around and reaching out, stroking the insides of her skull and the edges of her senses, like hot, foggy fingers moving along the underside of her skin.

June had begun hearing a voice chattering in her head. A strange, ancient language that was half singsong, half snarl. As the months wore on, it shifted to scraps of butchered English and Spanish, gibbering the words June had been reading and speaking. And then it graduated to sentences, in an accent that grew more refined each time she’d heard it.

The voice was not her own, and June had been terrified. On top of everything else, she’d been developing schizophrenia, she had thought. Schizophrenia was the logical, fact-based answer she’d been desperate for. She’d just lost touch with reality while she was in that cave, in addition to having a concussion. That was all there was to it, a ticking time bomb set deep in her DNA, that had just happened to be rigged to explode during the most important day of her life. Go figure.

And for a short while, that had satisfied her. The irrational thoughts, strange ranting monologues about history and gods, and the shadows she’d see in the corner of her eye were all symptoms of a sick brain. And it wasn’t like she was a stranger to having one. She’d gone through the process, gotten her meds, and assumed that everything would be okay.

But if anything, her attempts at fixing her problem had enraged the voice, and she’d wake up in the middle of the night gasping from a horrible aching pain in her arms and legs caused by red-hot hands grabbing at the insides of her muscles. Whenever she’d go to take her pills, she’d feel something inside her abdomen clenching her stomach, forcing them and everything she’d eaten that day out and onto the counter. Whenever she’d leave the house, she’d suddenly be hit with the sensation that she was falling into a pit of needles, and race back inside like the devil was nipping at her heels. When she’d pick up the phone to call her doctor, her entire arm would spasm, like the muscle was a twisting boa constrictor, and she’d collapse into a ball on the ground, clutching it and screaming.

Over a period of months, June had become a prisoner in her own mind.

And she could no longer call what was happening to her an illness. The voice in her head was alive and determined and wickedly cunning, only striking when she was about to remove herself from her self-imposed isolation. There is something inside her that shouldn’t be there, that wants her to suffer, and to do terrible things in it’s name.

So June had swallowed her pride, and had begun filling every room with incense, researching old herbal remedies, even going to church for the first time in her life to (unsuccessfully) fill three empty milk jugs with holy water from a baptismal font. From what she can tell, that last incident isn't on her criminal record yet, so that angry priest with the bloated, saggy face hadn't told the police like he'd been saying he would. Then again, she'd been sprinting away, so maybe she hadn't heard him correctly.

June, like an _idiot,_ had thought isolation had been the key. Isolation and ignorance. If she couldn’t medicate the monster away, she would just ignore it. She’d make her house smell like a candle store exploded inside it, grow special grass in the bathtub she never really used anyway, never use her phone or laptop again, never talk to another person in more than passing small talk, and just pretend that everything’s fine.

And where did that lead?

Never mind that she’ll never work again, or that she might end up going to some secret lab to be dissected for her parts.

People are _dead._

And even though June isn’t the one who killed them, she could have done something to stop it. There must have been some way to work around the witch’s mind tricks. June could have figured a way to climb up the long, dark tunnel and try to grab at the witch’s mind in the same way she had hers.

But that can’t happen. Not now, at least, when she barely understands how to take control back, and June won’t take any chances with letting the witch out so she can practice.

And one way or another, the word will slip out. It’d be crazy to think that it won’t. June won’t even let herself think it for too long. She’ll only ever be the witch, the creature, the invader, the parasite. She doesn’t get a name. She doesn’t deserve it. Only when the witch is gone will June let the shape of her name into her thoughts.

She’s been quiet since the arrest, but June knows it’s only a matter of time.

Over the past five months, she’s destroyed June’s career, her home, her freedom. She’s completely isolated, and the life stretching before her is going to be defined by absolute loneliness.

What else will she do? What more is she going to take?

Right now, she’s settled, floating along in the back of June’s mind at the end of the tunnel. If June says the word now, she’ll probably just flop down onto the bed and sleep. But the witch will get that energy back at some point. And then she’ll start using June as a human voodoo doll, until she surrenders control.

How long will she be able to last this time? What else can the witch do to break her? How long will it be before June’s sanity just drains away from the strain of it all?

There’s a tentative tapping on the door. Though it’s quiet, it still makes June yelp.

“Excuse me, Dr. Moone? Can I come in?”

It's him.

Right, he’s supposed to be watching her.

June picks herself up, quickly wipes her eyes dry, straightens the flyaway strands of her hair, and opens the door.

She finds herself staring at a slightly lopsided store-bought chocolate cupcake with blue frosting. 

“Happy birthday.” The words are flat and humorless and almost… awkward.

Oh, right. Her fucking _birthday._ She’s twenty-seven today. Isn’t that nice?

June stares at him.

There’s something almost pathetic about the way he’s standing in the doorway, shifting his feet, cupcake in hands, like an overgrown sixth grader about to ask her to the school dance.

“Look,” he says, “I know this is… uncomfortable for both of us...”

He’s right. God, he’s right. She’s going to be living with a man who knows more about her than she does him. She’s living with a man who’s here to babysit the monster inside her, to watch her movements and report her, even though every room in the house is speckled with cameras. She has no control over whether he stays or leaves, and she can’t really go anywhere at all.

There’s really no point in making this any stranger than it already is.

And _this?_ He’s being nice to her, when he doesn't have to be. The least she can do is do the same.

June opens the door, stepping aside, waving him inside.

“You… uh… you want half?” she offers as he steps into the room, skirting around her duffel bag and just a bit too close to her, so she quickly jerks back.

“Uh. Yeah. Sure. Half’s good.” He splits the cupcake, and gives her the larger piece as they settle tentatively on the edge of her bed.

He swallows his in a bite, and June snorts, doing the same, crumbs spilling from her fingertips and onto her bedspread. _Well, I was going to spill something on it at some point._

It’s like they’re having a staring contest, she decides as they watch each other swallow.

She loses, when she keeps getting distracted by a speck of blue frosting stuck to the corner of his goatee.

When her eyes leave his, Rick takes it as permission to glance around her very bare room. His eyes immediately find cracks in doorways and corners of dressers. Cameras and bugs she'd been trying to avoid looking for.

“You know they’re, um, they’re _listening_ to us. _Watching_ us too.”

Right. ARGUS and their hundred eyes and ears. It looks like they went with the giant myth. Hopefully, it won't end as badly for them as it did for him.

“Yeah. I know,” June replies, hating the way her voice comes out thin and shaky, “But it isn’t _that_ bad.”

“Why?”

“I’ve kind of had someone doing that for a few months now. You know.”

He frowns. “And you don’t care?”

“No. I do. I _don’t_ like it,” June says, “But… it’s better. Because they’re watching from outside, not... They’re not doing this to help me, but that’s what they’re doing. She’s not going to try something if someone’s always watching. Not while she’s this weak. And if she does, they can learn more about her. She won’t like that.”

 _How do you know she’s weak?_  hangs in the air between them, but he doesn’t say anything.

And truthfully, June really doesn’t know. It’s just a feeling, deep in her bones, where the witch is coiled.

She’s weak. She was much stronger once, but she isn’t now. She wants to be, but something’s stopping her. Something is missing that she desperately wants back. When she’d been terrorizing June’s mind, she had been convinced that something on her laptop would lead her to it. Something in the tomb she'd left behind.

And if June finds out what it is, maybe, just _maybe…_

“Hey, uh…” Rick begins, and June snaps to attention again.

“June,” she corrects. No point in calling her Dr. Moone if they’re basically roommates now, since she won't be calling him Colonel. Who knows if she's even still a doctor? She'll still use the title though. She'd suffered long and hard for her degree. Just because she'll probably never be allowed near a dig site again doesn't mean all the knowledge she's accumulated is suddenly gone.

“June? About that… uh, that thing in Boston?”

His words feel like a punch in the gut.

June’s eyes begin to feel damp and her throat closes. That spot in the middle of her chest is turning cold and shaking, and suddenly, she can hear blood pumping past her ears.

The dark thing coiled in her gut stirs slightly, and she winces in response.

Already, she’s steeling herself. Waiting for the accusation, the pity, the annoyance that’s been present in every conversation she’s had in the past few months.

_June, you’re the worst archaeologist in the world, how could you break that idol?_

Never mind that it wasn’t her fault.

_June, you should have stuck to art. You never should have thought you could do this._

Never mind that it was her parents’ idea in the first place to put down her drawing tablet and take up a job that makes ‘real money.’

_June, you killed those people. You’re a monster._

Never mind that it wasn’t even her who'd done it.

_June, you’re working with her. You’re helping her._

Never mind that she has no control. Never mind that the witch forced her way into June’s body without asking her, and tore her life to shreds.

_June. You’re just weak. Get the hell out of bed and stop crying and fix this._

Never mind that she _is_ trying, she really is, _it’s just not enough._ Nothing she ever does will ever be enough, because this is too much for her to take. Because she is weak and stupid and she’s going to be all alone with this monster inside her because no one cares and she doesn't deserve-

“It wasn’t your fault. You know that, right?”

“What?”

“It wasn’t you. I… I thought it was, at first. And I’m very sorry that I did, because it wasn’t.”

_He isn’t blaming her. He isn’t blaming her. He isn’t blaming her._

The words repeat inside her head like a prayer, as her cheeks become wet and her mouth hangs open.

Rick immediately begins stammering an apology, removing his hand from hers, withdrawing from the bed and backing towards the door.

And she can’t let him leave. She can’t let the first person who’s believed in her for months walk away, because he might be the last person who ever does.

June throws her shaking arms around him, melting like candle wax against his body. He’s still at first, something strong and solid and unyielding for her to mold herself to.

And then slowly, almost imperceptibly, his hands slip into place against her back, and she leans into the warmth. And he leans back.

They don’t say a word for a very long time. She just shakes and cries and he holds her.

Rick leaves eventually, when June has stopped trembling, and when they untangle, his fingers brush against her hands longer than they should, but she likes the electric feeling that shoots up her spine in response.

Then, quietly, he slips out of the room, nodding at his own across the hall.

 _I’ll be here if you need me,_ his look says, and that's all it needs to.

And June is staring after him as he closes his door, watching the little bars of shadow bounce across the light that shines from the bottom of his door as he walks back and forth in his room.

She has to fight this, she decides, drawing in a deep, shaking breath and nodding to herself as the tears keep falling. She can’t lie down and die, because there might be one person left in the whole goddamn world who believes that she’s a human being. And he’s across the hall right now, and she just _can’t_ let the witch hurt him.

She can’t let all of this horror whittle away at what’s left of her until there’s nothing but an empty shell. Because this is what these past five months of hell had been about. The witch had been trying to kill her slowly, rot her from the inside, turn her into a quiet and compliant husk to use to commit terrible acts.

This might have been what this past week has been about. All those mind-numbing, body-numbing tests, all those papers, all those signatures, all those suits. ARGUS is trying to make her into a spreadsheet. A collection of facts and figures. A summary of Dr. June Moone to send off to a lab for results and disassemble for its parts.

The witch and ARGUS are killing her soul, turning her into a puppet.

But she’s _human._ She’s been such an idiot for thinking otherwise.

She’s human and she’s going to fight this slow, grinding death with every bone in her body until there’s nothing of her left.

She has to try to live with her. The witch is her burden to bear alone, and June just has to find a way to deal with it. It’ll be exhausting, but she can adapt. She _has_ to. Otherwise, she’ll start suffering from strange compulsions, thinking terrible thoughts, desiring terrible things. She'll hurt herself. She'll hurt people.

And it’s not just her anymore.

There’s someone here with her. Someone who _cares,_ who believes in her, who wants to help her. Someone the witch wants to hurt.

She can’t let him down.

 

* * *

 

There’s no way ARGUS doesn’t know how dangerous the witch is, so whatever this whole situation is about, it doesn’t have anything to do with making sure she doesn’t cause any harm. They want her to come out at some point.

So when? And _why?_

Those are questions Rick has thought of too, she can tell. He keeps giving her this _look_ that’s always followed by turning to a specific corner of the house where they know a camera is.

But it feels to dangerous to voice those questions. After all, someone’s always listening.

And it isn’t like they haven’t been talking.

He hasn’t spoken to anyone other than Waller, and that’s strictly over the phone. She can’t talk to anyone but him or her parasite, and she really doesn’t want to provoke anything. The witch is getting better and better at English, and she can’t risk encouraging any further improvement.

They haven’t seen anyone else in person, apart from the doctors who come every week to ask her exhaustive questions and stick her with needles while she listens to Rick hovering outside her bedroom door like a nervous mother hen.

Rick really isn’t the kind of person who makes noise for the hell of it, and for that matter, she isn’t either. They’re both private people living quiet lives that, up until recently, completely revolved around their respective careers. They’ve both had difficulty with connecting with others, though June gets the feeling like he hadn’t really tried to. They would both rather accomplish something in a conversation than learn about the mundane details of someone’s life.

But now their lives are at a complete standstill.

There’s nothing to distract them from their own loneliness (And they _are_ lonely, to one degree or another, whether they choose to admit it or not). There’s nowhere to go without asking permission to a voice on a phone and waiting a few days for permission and an armed escort. There’s nowhere to really hide in a single-story, two-bedroom house.

So it was really just inevitable that they’d open up to each other.

After four days of frosty silence, she came to him, perched like a flighty bird on the edge of the couch he was slouched on.

Her voice had been husky and scratched from underuse, and June had stumbled over the words like they were gushing out of a waterfall. She doesn’t even know what she’d been talking about at the time. Something about golf, and how he likes it, and how she wanted to know why. But it doesn’t really matter what the subject of their conversation was, because past that point, it was easy.

Suddenly, they’re talking about everything.

And June feels _light,_ like an enormous invisible load has been suddenly lifted from her shoulders. It becomes so easy to pull herself out of bed and carry on with her life, now that there’s someone who cares about her, who wants to see her every morning.

Maybe he feels the same way, because he starts following her from room to room, from the house to the yard, listening with rapt attention as she chatters on and on about anything and everything. She’s ranted to him for hours about ancient Peruvian civilizations and childhood violin lessons from hell and how much she hates his taste in music and the pitfalls of constantly changing your handwriting mid-stroke to confuse ancient witch spirits that can’t quite read English yet. And she keeps seeing him hurry to wipe a big, stupid grin off his face, so she knows it’s much more than just politeness that keeps him listening.

But it’s hard to forget that they’re always being observed by an audience.

Though the conversations they’ve shared are certainly all accumulating on a database in some dark, cobwebbed basement, they’ve been fairly innocuous. Childhood experiences, personal preferences, harmless opinions. Very little about Rick’s military past, which she’s sure is much darker than he’s letting on (Which is fine, because there’s something dark and terrible sitting inside her too, so she's really in no position to judge).

That’s one of the things they can’t talk about. So is talking about what ARGUS plans to do with them.

Because this is temporary. It’s all temporary, until June gets taken somewhere else, or they find a way to separate her and the witch, because they don’t want to get rid of her.

And that terrifies June.

Rick has become her best and only friend, and she knows the witch wants to cause him harm.

She’s back again, around two weeks into June and Rick’s isolation. Not an hour passes when June doesn’t feel her crawling around in various parts of her body, reaching her dark, sooty fingertips into the edges of June’s conscious mind.

So they decide to commit to a routine. Something strict, something rigid. Something that will make it easier for them to notice if the witch's influence gets too dangerous for them to handle.

Rick needs to be with her whenever possible, so they time everything carefully, do everything in the same order every day. But even then, the witch still finds ways to spill out and play with her.

Their alarms go off at exactly six o’clock in the morning, but there are times when June feels physically pinned to the bed by something massive and heavy sitting on her chest, and Rick has to drag her out from under her sheets.

They eat all their meals together at exactly the same time every day, but sometimes, June is struck with the sensation of chewing broken glass, or swallowing a live tapeworm, and she spends hours in front of the toilet, while he holds up her ponytail and asks if she's okay. 

They exercise every morning, and June tries to ignore the fluttering in her lower abdomen whenever he takes his shirt off. She can feel the witch coiled low in her gut, twisting the sensation into something extremely unpleasant, and it makes her see white sparks of fury in the corners of her eyes. _How dare you._

Every afternoon, Rick teaches her Japanese. The witch is eerily accommodating, settled peacefully behind her eyes, and finally provides her with some relief. The fog rolls to the back of her skull, and both of them listen to Rick with rapt attention. And then June realizes what that means, so they can’t do it anymore.

They spend hours cleaning until she can literally see her reflection in the hardwood floor. That’s something they actually _have_ to do, because somehow, dirt just keeps accumulating in the corners of rooms, and moss constantly springs up between the tiles of the bathroom, and animals keep scratching their way into the crawlspace under the house (To say nothing of the time an entire flock of blackbirds smashes into the front of the house, and they have to spend an entire afternoon piling squashed clumps of glossy black feathers into trash bags and washing bird-shaped smudges off the windows).

They experiment with cooking to eat away at the time, and June is strictly banned from being near the knives or stove, after some disturbingly close calls where she loses control of her fingers for just a second.

They spend their evenings arguing in front of the TV, and they can’t watch anything based in reality for fear that the witch will learn something. So as a result, they’re stuck watching the same sitcoms and miscellaneous episodes of House Hunters over and over _(And yes, Rick, her reactions to Sabrina the Teenage Witch are absolutely worth the migraine)._

They go to sleep at exactly ten o’clock at night, even though June lies awake for hours afterward, staring at the ceiling, feeling the witch tracing the outlines of her bones, hearing her whisper in her ears about all the terrible things she’ll do to Rick if June doesn’t let her out. And when she does sleep, it’s never for long, because she can now pinpoint the presence of the witch gliding along the fuzzy edges of her dreams, always out of sight, always out of reach, but always present.

The only time they aren’t in each other’s company is when they’re in the bathroom (And even then, there’s a timer), or when the doctors come. And both are temporary instances that leave them both nervous in each other's absence.

It’s become clockwork.

It’s become _boring._

They can’t go anywhere, they can’t talk to anyone, and their careers are out of the question. June is starting to develop a serious case of cabin fever, and she’s pretty sure Rick is too. They’re people who need a challenge, who need to move and think and solve the problems they come across. And they’re stuck here in purgatory, doing the same things over and over, hoping the witch won’t come out (And that’s the definition of insanity, isn’t it? If it isn't, it should be).

But it’s important to keep the routine. Because of the routine, because of _Rick,_ it’s easy to tell if something’s wrong.

Take for example, one rainy afternoon, when June spends an entire afternoon hopping over tiny, slippery, translucent animals with sharp teeth made of broken glass that kept digging into her bare heels.

They slither through the cracks under doors and around light fixtures, always out of sight when she whips around to look, so quickly that the end of her ponytail stings her in the face. The creatures warp everything around them, leaving trails of mirage, and when they speak, it’s in half-chattered gibberish that sounds like little girls speaking in a language she didn't know.

June knows that months ago, she’d have screamed and cried and spent hours chasing them with a broom, tearing into the walls to find the nest she’s sure she’s hearing rustling under the wallpaper.

But now Rick is here. And it’s so easy for her to reach over and tap on the shoulder and say, “Hey, you don’t see those… uh, _weasel_ things over there, do you?”

“Uh… no.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“... Alright…” he says with a nod, and gets back to reading. No questions, no doubt, just trust that June knows what’s best for herself. She might not, but the fact that he’s giving her it anyway means the world to her.

And then June ignores them, even when they crawl up her legs and start to gnaw at her toes.

She just focuses on continuing the sketch on her tablet. June has been stubbornly trying to remember all the skills she’d picked up from lazy afternoons in between home-school lessons, back when she’d been sure she’d be an artist. Now that she has all the time in the world, maybe she can actually do it.

Right now, she’s trying to reconstruct that symbol painted on the wall of her former bathtub in black sludge. It’s been finding it’s way into her nightmares more often than not, and she figures that if she just gets it down somewhere, she’ll finally be able to stop thinking about it.

Besides, she’s come to realize that the witch _really_ hates being ignored. She can almost hear a tiny little temper tantrum raging around in the back of her head. June imagines the witch stomping around on tiny little feet made of black fog, kicking and whining.

She abandons her attempt to recreate the pentagram and draws it, despite the skull-splitting migraine that hits her the second she picks up her stylus.

Rick plans to have it framed.

“Tiny victories,” he says, and she doubles over laughing.

And the fatigue that leaves her bedridden for hours is _absolutely_ worth the tinny little screech of anger that rolls around inside her skull.

_This is my body. This is my world. You don’t get to hurt me anymore. You don't get to hurt him._

Dimly, in the back of her mind, she hears the witch hiss a vicious promise.

_Watch me._

 

* * *

 

Rick awakens in the dead of night to something heavy and blisteringly hot pressing the air out of his chest, and a giggle that reminds him of the sound of rats skittering behind the walls of an old house.

His gut begins twisting like slippery eels as he realizes what’s above him.

She’s out. Somehow, the witch got out.

And she’s sitting on him.

The entity that has all of ARGUS shitting itself, the entity that murdered a dozen people in a single hour, the entity that single-handedly proved the existence of magic, the entity that’s systematically destroyed June’s entire life and is trying to do the same to her sanity is _sitting on him._ Like an oversized, mangy cat.

When he’d first learned that the thing possessing June was a witch, he’d thought of a pale, dark-haired woman in emerald-green robes with a tall, peaked hat. He’d seen the pictures, of course, but they were blurred and distant, so his vision had still felt plausible, if revised slightly to include a pair of glowing eyes and a black rat’s nest of hair.

But this? This isn’t what he’d expected at _all._

She’s filthy and wild, with chirping sparks flicking off her skin and fizzling away into the air, reflecting slightly off of the tarnished crescent adorning her forehead. Heat curls off her body in smoky coils, and he knows that if he tries to grab her, his hands will blister.

The Enchantress is hunched over herself, like a feral animal, trailing rusted chains and strands of rope-like hair across his bed, hands leaving black, oily prints on his bed sheets. She looks at him strangely, like she’s struggling to see him past a dense fog. There’s something distinctly predatory about her expression. She wants to hurt him, he can feel the horrific intent roiling off of her in waves and flattening him to his mattress.

But she still has June’s face.

That’s _June,_ glaring down at him with ember eyes in revulsion, curling her lip as if he’s the one that stinks, imagining all the gruesome ways she could kill him.

 _No._ That’s June’s _body,_ being used by someone else without her permission, while she's probably in there, begging her to stop.

 _ARGUS_ , he remembers, glancing at one of the hidden cameras he’d managed to find. They have to be seeing this. They’ll be sending people to help him. He just needs to keep the witch occupied.

Something about her doesn’t feel right, something about the way she’s blinking at him, slightly swaying, constantly squinting like he’s a particularly challenging puzzle she’s trying to figure out. In the middle of the sour, musty stench of rotting animal that clings to her, he detects a slight whiff of alcohol.

_Jesus fucking Christ, is she drunk?_

With a sharp _pop_ and a burst of putrid smoke that sends him into a coughing fit, the witch is suddenly gone.

In the living room, there’s a sudden crash, and a staticky burst of muffled conversation.

“Shit!” Rick shouts, leaping off his bed and following her. He snatches the gun from his bedside table and skids across the hardwood floor in his socks, smearing black muddy handprints across the floor.

How the hell is he supposed to get her to turn back? He can’t just _shoot_ her, can he? It can’t be _that_ easy.

He glances quickly into June’s room. Her laptop is lying on her bed, open to some news website called the Midway City Graphic, with her glasses folded carefully on the keyboard. Her sheets are mud-streaked, and _-shit, is that blood?_

No. No, it’s wine. She spilled wine.

She’d been drunk. That’s it. She’d been drunk and the name spilled out. That’s all there is to it. It was an honest mistake. The witch hadn't done something to her.

Why the hell was she drinking alone? They have a rule about that.

And why the hell didn’t he get a call about it? They’re being watched at all times. Someone had to see June doing this, which means someone had to decide not to wake him.

Which means that they want the Enchantress to come out. So they’ve decided she’s either harmless enough to be allowed to roam, or whatever damage she does is worth whatever ARGUS is going to gain. Rick suspects it's the former, because if she weren't tipsy, he's certain that she would have killed him by now. 

Rick rushes into the living room, and stops dead in his tracks when he sees the carnage.

The kitchen table is split in half, defaced by strange symbols carved into it with a kitchen knife, all of June’s color-coded sticky notes torn to scraps and scattered across the floor like confetti, books shredded and falling like snow from the ceiling. His favorite golf club is sticking out of the wall, and there’s a gaping hole in the couch cushions, like a wild animal had tried to burrow into them. June’s tablet is shattered into tiny fragments and arranged in small piles in each corner of the room.

How fast was she moving, in order to do this? Or was it some kind of spell? The pentagram in the middle of the living room floor doesn’t look too promising.

The television, covered in black fingerprints, is humming softly, playing a documentary about the Kryptonian attack.

June was there, he remembers. He’d shown up in the aftermath, but she had been _right there,_ a few blocks away, as the entire world changed. She’d told him about spending hours crouched in a dark, dusty basement, listening to the earth groan and buckle around her.

And the Enchantress is sitting in the center of it all, carefully dismantling June’s alarm clock in the middle of a nest of throw pillows. Her movements are sluggish, and she squints at the machine in her hands, muttering to herself in a raspy, singsong language. The cloud of smoke around her flexes and coils like a nest of snakes.

Rick takes a step forward, his gun raised _(Oh, yeah, shoot her. You’ll hurt June),_ and feels something roll under his feet.

He catches himself, and kicks the empty wine bottle away. It rolls into the wall with a _clink,_ and the witch flinches at the sound.  She lets out a sharp cry as she slices the back of her hand wide open on a jagged piece of metal.

Her blood is all wrong. It’s viscous and chunky and dark turquoise, like toxic sludge.

She pulls her hands out of the clock, and cradles the injured one, staring at it with drowsy interest as the gash closes with a greenish flash, like fire is flickering under her skin.

She can heal. What the fuck is he supposed to do if she can _heal?_

The Enchantress casts him a hateful glance from over her shoulder, which sharpens into a nasty smile, dripping with malice, and pauses, her mouth slightly open. It seems like she desperately wants to say something to him, but instead, she thinks better of it. Instead, she whispers her name in a hiss that’s more animal than human, and dissolves into a cloud of grainy, vaporous smoke that drifts to the end of the room, and reforms itself into June.

She plops onto the couch from three feet in midair, and Rick immediately switches the safety on his gun, setting it aside and dropping to his knees in front of her.

Her pale face is red and puffy, and she looks ready to vomit. Her pinkish eyes are bulging, and her entire body is rigid as death. Her hair is rumpled, and there’s a red stain on her shirt that makes Rick’s heart skip a beat before he realizes it’s just wine.

But she’s okay. She’s completely unharmed.

June blinks quickly, staring up at him like a puppy waiting to get kicked.

“June?” His hands wrap around her trembling knees, “You’re okay. You’re _fine.”_

“I… I’m _sorry!”_  Her words come out slurred and shaking, as the tears gather in the corners of her eyes, “I’m sorry, I didn’t _mean_ to.”

“It’s okay, June,” Rick reassures her, bringing his hands up to her shoulders, “It was just a mistake. We all make them. No one got hurt.”

Never mind that letting the witch out could potentially trigger the apocalypse. But this is _June._ She’d have never done it intentionally. This was just some mistake. If Waller doesn’t already know that, he can convince her.

 _“No_ body?” June gives him a quizzical expression, then her eyes focus on one of the buttons of his shirt, and she starts nodding solemnly, picking at it. “That’s _good.”_

“Yeah, nobody. She didn’t go anywhere. She didn’t hurt anyone. She was right here this whole time, wasn’t she?”

_“I don’t know!”_

Right. She’s drunk. He won’t get anything out of her for a while.

“O… O _kay._ That’s fine.”

June starts running her fingertip in circles along the outline of a nearby muddy footprint, smearing a crude line onto the fabric next to it. They’ll have to clean this entire mess up, but they’ve been through enough for now. She needs to sleep this off, and they’ll deal with it in the morning, or when ARGUS comes crashing through the walls to take her away.

June leans into him, wrapping her arms around his waist and stealthily trying to rub her runny nose on his shoulder. Rick decides to politely ignore that, and focuses on the slow disappearance of her drunken sobs.

“I was gonna be so _important,”_ she whispers.

“What do you mean?”

“I… They kept going after I… They’re all famous and important and _I could have…”_ Her voice dissolves into gibbering nonsense.

That’s enough for now, he decides, as he rises from a kneeling position in front of her to take a seat on the couch by her side. 

 _“Don’t leave,”_ she hisses in his ear when he shifts his weight, fingers twisting into his shoulder blades. 

“I won’t,” he promises, pulling her into him.

If they’re coming, it’ll be to rearrest her. Never mind him, or any of the implications this will have for his future. June isn't a person to them. She'll disappear even more than she already has. Site Bravo would be a kindness compared to the dark places Rick is thinking about, and he won't be able to do anything to stop it. If this is it, if this is her last night of any kind of freedom, he’ll stay with her, and wait for the end to come. Because that's all he really _can_ do. Sit and wait and hold her hand as the world crashes down around them.

But then it doesn't.

There's no crash. No team of armored military men here to drag June away. No witch giving him that murderous smile right before she turns him inside-out.

Rick wakes on his own, to the mid-autumn sunlight streaming through the window of the living room, with a blanket carefully draped over him.

But June isn't next to him.

It feels like a sonic blast of panic has gone off in his mind, and he leaps to his feet, trailing small blobs of torn mustard-colored stuffing from the upholstery. Immediately he swears as his toes squelch in a puddle of still-damp mud. But the floor is mostly clean. All the shattered glass and pieces of wood have been cleared away. The pentagram’s been smeared.

There’s a line of trash bags leaning against the front door, and if he listens, he can hear the washing machine humming in the next room over. A mop is leaning against the bathroom door.

“Rick?” comes a distant voice from across the house, instantly soothing his frayed nerves.

So she’s awake. She's okay. She's here. She’d gotten up before him, somehow untangled herself from him, and cleaned the majority of the debris out of the living room without him noticing. He doesn’t know if that’s a testament to how heavy a sleeper he is, or how spectacular she is at powering through a hangover.

She really should have woken him, though. That’s a definite violation of their agreement, but if last night taught him anything, it’s that there’s only so much they can do. It’s an inevitability. They could only keep it up for so long.

So what’s the point of him, then? The witch can get out and he can’t stop it.

No, he _never_ could have, because getting one soldier to guard a spell-casting, flying, self-healing teleporting immortal monster is _batshit crazy._

So that’s not what this is about.

He’s just here, alone with June, getting closer and closer to her as the days pass.

And that’s just fucking _dangerous,_ because after what happened last night, they won’t let this continue. June will leave, or he’ll have to do something terrible to her. Or even if they do let this keep going, they’ll just keep getting more attached.  And that’s the idea, right? _That’s the angle._

Get someone feeling more than they should, and suddenly, they’re invested. They want to do what you say, because the life of a person they care about hanging in the balance. You have power over them.

It has to be June, then. When they’d arrested her, she’d been incredibly dangerous. Estranged from her family, with no friends or significant others. She’d lived for her career, and that was over. So when he’d pulled June out of that bathtub, she’d had no attachments. Nothing and no one to live for. Nothing stopping her from indulging the witch. And that had made her dangerous. Maybe just as dangerous as the dark thing lurking inside her that ARGUS doesn’t want to neutralize, because she can let her out anytime she wants.  

So they’d had to change that.

So they’d gotten him to put his life on pause for months, long enough for them to care about each other. Now, whenever they approach her, because they _will,_ she has to comply. And he'll have to do the same.

 _“Rick!”_  June calls from her bedroom, shaking Rick from his thoughts.

“Yeah?”

“Get in here!”

There’s something different in the tone of her voice. She’s _excited._

Rick sidesteps a handful of muddy hand prints as he rushes to June’s room. 

The first thing he notices is that a can of air freshener has been emptied into her room, trying to mask the rotting-meat smell of the witch (It isn’t working). June is crouched next to her bed, stripped to the mattress. She’s hunched over her laptop, frantically scribbling into a notebook in her ingeniously inconsistent handwriting.

June must have heard him coming, because she glances quickly up at him, tosses her wet ponytail over her shoulder. The slightly lopsided smile she sends his way makes his heart skip a beat.

“You sleep like a brick, you know that?”

So it was the former. He’ll have to work on that. It could be a problem later.

“Yeah. So what is it?”

“Come here,” she says, tapping the floor next to her with her palm.

Rick slides down next to her, so close that their arms are brushing, and their hips bump up against each other. Neither of them pays the contact any mind.

“So… Last night…”

“What happened?”

“You remember my expedition, right?”

He nods. She’d told him her side of the story not long ago. But why’s she bringing that up?

“Well, you know there were other things in the cave. Other than her.”

“Of course.”

“My team kept exploring, after… well, _you know._ And they removed some of the artifacts from the cave, I mean, with the proper permission. And now they’ve published their research, without my name on it. Last night, I found out about it, and I… I overreacted.”

What she’d said last night, about being important, makes more sense.

 _June_ had been the one who’d discovered that cave, whether it had been of her own will or not.  She’d found things that would have rewritten ancient history and completely changed the way they looked at metahumans.

And she isn’t getting _shit_ for it.

He can definitely see why she’d decided to drink.

“But that’s not it. All the artifacts? They’re on display in the Midway City Museum, _right now._ A whole wing’s been set aside just for them. The exhibit opened two days ago.”

She nudges the laptop into his hands, momentarily groans as she clicks out of a pop-up ad, and Rick starts scrolling through the article.

_Exciting New Addition to Midway City Museum of Natural History: Curators Carter and Shiera Hall Welcome Neolithic Artifacts to Collection in Exclusive Exhibition._

“One of the things she’s always been pushing me to do, right from the start, is to find out what else is in her tomb, and where it went. Now she knows, but so do we.”

“So what are you saying, we _go_ there? Let’s say we get the clearance, then what? Aren’t we just doing what she wants?”

“Maybe,” June murmurs, staring at the pixelated photo of her ex-colleagues in impeccable clothing, posing next to the curators and a pair of rusted swords in a shining glass case.

“She wants to find something,” she says, “Something important. And she’s scared to death that we’ll get to it before she does, because if we do, we have _leverage.”_

Rick’s phone starts ringing.

 

* * *

 

The Midway City Museum of Natural History is packed to the brim, even though it’s only half an hour from closing.

 _We really should have been given more time for this,_ he decides as he stifles the urge to whip around and shove the man who just elbowed him in the back.

Rick has one good suit. And if his One Good Suit is ruined because of some jackass holding a slushie that somehow dodged confiscation at the front door, he might grab the battleaxe mounted on the wall and take matters into his own hands.

Wait… no, he’s fine. No stain. Maybe next time.

But there’s still something deeply annoying about what they’re doing, surfing on a tide of bodies, with no choice but to let themselves be carried from exhibit to exhibit. He wants to just shoulder his way through everyone in their path, since he can’t bark orders and expect them to fall into line, or jump the railing and slip between the polished suits of armor.

Well, not without getting tackled by one of the security guards, which is beside the point of dressing up like an ordinary couple going to the museum. Besides, they’re definitely being watched.

Rick glances around at the sea of faces for maybe the millionth time, even though he knows he won’t be able to pick out the ARGUS agents that are certainly planted here.

They’re pretending to be ordinary tonight. He won’t be the one to blow it, even though the effects of his isolation with June are really beginning to weigh in on him.

He’s spent four months in and around one small house, with one person, so being in a city surrounded by thousands of people and a deafening tide of sound is messing with him. Which is more than a bit absurd, since he’s been in active war zones more times than he can count.

Maybe it’s just the nature of what they’re doing, because if they find what they’re looking for, they could change the world. Maybe even _save_ it, if the witch is becoming that serious of a threat. And she might, now that Superman might be a terrorist.

And if they don’t, if the witch gets out (which isn’t likely, but they can’t afford to rule that possibility out), she could do God knows what now that they’re literally down the hall from something she’d spent months driving June insane for.

That’s it. It’s not the people, it’s the _pressure_ that’s making him feel hopelessly adrift and extremely irritable.

And then her hand finds his, and keeps it.

And suddenly, everything’s fine. There is someone solid and real keeping his feet on the ground, who needs him to do the same for her.

If it weren’t for June, he’d be tearing his hair out by now, calling Amanda, demanding to know why they couldn’t just wait until the museum had emptied out before going in, even though June’s already told him the answer.

She’s been ecstatic for the past day, since he’d gotten the call, and he won’t take that from her.

He’s been to Midway before, but never the museum. It’s world-renowned for its priceless collections of Egyptian relics and medieval weaponry. June had been bouncing in her seat, rattling off it’s achievements on the plane a few hours ago until her voice had cracked, when they’d been surrounded by stern-faced ARGUS agents, but no Amanda (Thank God).

Rick had basked in her joy. Now, he knows all sorts of trivia about the museum that he’ll probably never use, but it was like last night hadn’t even happened, and seeing June genuinely happy and excited just _does_ something to him.

For a long time, he’s known that there’s more to June than just the quiet, withdrawn face she wears in front of people she doesn’t know well. There’s a thriving personality hidden under that constant veil of uncertainty, one that’s alive and vital and hopelessly restrained, either by the witch crawling around inside her head or her own insecurities, and he’d struggled for weeks to draw her out, thinking that if he didn’t get to her in time, she’d be lost to it.

In the early days, when they’d still been getting used to each other, he would see it in bits and pieces when she’d react to something he said. The way her thick brows clench together, her gray-green eyes bulge, her mouth twists in amusement, her whole body struggling to emote beneath a rigid exterior.

He sees it now, in the way she raises one of her eyebrows at him, before she turns back to squeezing through the storming sea of bodies, following the bright signs hanging above their heads.

They’re so _close._

Her hand squeezes his, a quick affirmation that he’s there. He tightens his own in response.

And suddenly, June is weaving through the crowd like there’s some kind of invisible magnetic pull drawing her in. Like with all things, she leads, and he follows, marveling at her sureness. She’s never been here before, never seen a map of it’s interior. But somehow, June can suddenly find the seams between currents and clouds of people.

If anything, _he’s_ the one dragging his feet, staring up at reconstructed obelisks and shining swords and battleaxes, feeling like he’s eight years old again. He wants to stop and point at everything and listen to June talk, watch her eyes light up as she waves her hands like she’s conducting an invisible orchestra, the way she always does when she’s deep into a subject that interests her.  But a powerful intensity always takes over June whenever she has her mind set on something. It’s like everything else falls away, and she _has_ to do it, no matter what state she’s in or what’s happening to her. She just keeps picking herself up, gritting her teeth, and moving forward. Nothing can stop her, not even the promise of a voluntary audience to her endless fountain of historical knowledge.

One plus of being surrounded by seemingly everyone in Midway City is that they’re completely unremarkable in the crowd. Rick and June are a rather unassuming pair, so they disappear easily. No one bats an eye when June flies past them, and he’s always just a step behind her, even when her hand slips from his for a moment. It’s like an invisible line is connecting them both.

And _there._ The crowd has formed a sort of vacuum into a single hallway, and June tightens her fingers around his elbow as they’re drawn into it's center.

Again, as he’s surrounded by squirming bodies, he thinks about how easy it could have been to come after-hours. Amanda could arrange anything in a second.

But all these people are important. They’re here to overwhelm the witch. Sensory overload. If you drop her into too much new at once, she’ll cower in the back of June’s consciousness. June says that she doesn’t want to be caught in the middle of a crowd she can’t control, so this is the safest way to get to the artifacts.

And they need to get to whatever she’s looking for before she gets her confidence back.

They emerge in a long hallway with a towering cathedral-like ceiling. Massive prints of the walls of ancient skulls Rick had seen in photographs adorn the walls, and an identical replica of the altar sits along the far wall.

In the center of the room, in a glimmering glass case guarded by a ring of brass rails, are a pair of impossibly rusted swords. They remind him a bit of Tatsu’s, if only much older, and more wicked in the curve of the blades.  

 _Was the witch like her,_ he wonders. _Can her swords steal souls too? Are they even hers?_

Rick reaches over to an abandoned pamphlet hanging over a nearby trash can, and starts reading over the creased pages, much of it information June has already shared with him.

“Jesus Christ, _really?”_

Rick glances up, and sees that June is reading over his shoulder. The reverberating rumble of the crowd is so loud, he has to lean inches away from her face to be able to have a conversation without shouting. Even then, he has to raise his voice.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“They named it the  _Far Chamber._ I _knew_ they’d do this. They _always_ do this.”

Oh. June’s thing about names.

“I mean,” June begins to rant, raising her hands to begin conducting, “Really? _Far Chamber? Come on,_ Skull Chamber is _so_ much more memorable and it’s easier for people to understand. And how _far_ exactly is-”

Rick looks up, alarm bells ringing in his head as June’s mouth hangs open.

She’s gaping at a pair of what might be voodoo dolls, in a case of their own, off to the side.

No, not dolls, he decides as she walks closer.

They’re urns.

He follows her, careful to keep her hand in his.

She wraps her hand around the brass bar, and taps it with a short fingernail, staring at one in particular, with it’s head hovering above it’s body.

Her eyes are getting misty.

That’s it. The thing that had started this whole mess.

_But why are there two?_

His lips begin to form the question, but June turns sharply on her heel, and rushes in the opposite direction, towards an assortment of various objects from the cave, thousands of years out of time and thousands of miles out of place.

June smiles wryly as he reads to her how the archaeologists had decided to justify their findings. According to the pamphlet, they’d concluded that the ancient world had been far more connected than anyone had previously thought, if relics from Malta, Early Dynastic Egypt and some place called Olmec could all exist in the same place.

“And what do _you_ think?” he asks. 

“They’re onto _something,”_ June admits, before she frowns and leans closer to the paper, “But… But it’s _her._ It was just _her_ doing it, not a group of people. Not a trade route. She can teleport, right?”

“Yeah?”

“So, until we learn otherwise, we have to assume she can travel anywhere in the world. I don’t think she started off in Peru. I mean, from what she’s been ranting about, she worked her way over. And all these things are from hundreds of years apart, so she had other hosts before me.”

“Really?”

This changes a lot. June's possessed by a being that knows what she's doing, that's done this before. They need to know what happened to her other hosts. Nothing good, in all likelihood, but it's still information. Still something that could help them in the long run.

“Yeah...” June’s eyes cloud in thought, and she starts counting things off on her fingers. “Like Malta. Neolithic Malta is the earliest, then Egypt, then pre-Olmec, then she ends up in Peru. All different time periods, and she _definitely_ isn’t immortal. So she’s had other hosts. And Malta’s in Europe, so she probably first crossed over from… well, _wherever_ she’s from, somewhere around there.”

Rick nods, but…

“So, what exactly _is_ an Olmec?”

“Oh, the Olmecs were like…” June frowns, eyes flitting as she tries to simplify whatever college-level lecture she was about to spring on him, “Like the pre-Aztecs. You know about the Aztecs, right?”

Nope, not a thing. South American history was never his strong suit.

“Yeah, I know the Aztecs. They were the guys with the feather headdresses and… uh, those steppy pyramids. And they gave all those conspiracy theorists heart attacks three years ago. Right?”

June looks like she’s about to explode into a fit of laughter, but then her eyes fall on something just beyond his shoulder, and her face darkens.  

Skeletons. Two meticulously reconstructed skeletons, in sleek glass cases, surrounded by objects that had been in the tomb with them.

A man and a woman, says the wrinkled pamphlet. The bodies had been crushed to smithereens by a group of people, literally torn to shreds and left in a grave opposite the urns. Sacrifice, the scientists had concluded. But Rick isn’t so sure, especially if the woman is who he thinks she is.

 _So_ _who’s the man?_

June doesn’t seem to care. She has eyes only for the woman, carefully examining an exquisite death mask hanging beside the bones. It resembles a fanged skull made of dozens of sharpened pieces of glimmering emerald, all carefully wired together.

Rick squints at the plaque hanging beside the display, next to some artist’s digital reconstruction of their faces. June spends a very long time staring at the woman’s.

Even though it’s a computer model, she’s glaring at the face, lip curling in cold satisfaction, like it’s _actually_ the Enchantress looking back at her. He can only imagine the kind of conversation she must be having with her in her head. What do you say when you show the asshole who stole your life their own mangled body, on display for thousands of people to ogle?

The plaque is suggesting that these people had been some kind of royalty, or religious icons, given that they keep appearing again and again throughout the cave. This was some kind of tomb. But who were they to _each other?_

“So it says here, the museum’s pretty sure these two were married or something.”

He turns to June, to try to get her input, but her face has gone completely green. She looks at him like he’d suggested that she swallow a live rat, and her fingers twitch, like she’s physically restraining herself from decking him in the face.

“June? What is it? What’s she doing?”

His voice seems to shake her out of her stupor, because she blinks quickly, snatches him by the elbow, and roughly hauls him away.

“I don’t know,” she hisses in his ear. “I just… I feel _gross._ I don’t know why. I want to keep moving. There’s something else here. We have to _hurry.”_

Rick glances at his watch. _Shit._ They have _fifteen minutes_ to-

June wrenches him around sharply and makes a beeline to a glass case on a stand behind a large billboard, immediately to the left of the skeletons.

There’s a small, shrunken object inside, that looks like a cluster of fire-burnt dirt and twigs. He honestly can’t tell what it is, until he sees the little label on the stand.

“The heart,” June hisses, "It's her heart."

As she draws closer, it seems to grow just a bit larger, like it’s inflating from the inside.

Something slightly greenish begins to pulse beneath the muck, and June jerks backwards sharply, like she’s been shocked, and her hand grabs his shoulder.

_“Let’s go. Right now!”_

Her face runs through a dozen expressions before she settles on one, an electric mix of fear and exhilaration, but her lips are curling up into a dazzling smile, and her eyes are bright.

 _They found it._ They found it, and the witch knows it. She’s _scared,_ because _finally,_ they have something on her _._

He catches June’s arm, and they melt into the departing crowd, letting it carry them out into the light-slivered night.

June lets out a soft yelp as a frigid blast of air flies up the street and whips at her bare legs. He snatches her hand and it feels like they fly down the streets to the hotel they technically haven’t seen yet. They’d jumped off the plane, climbed into a taxi, and driven straight to the museum.

But now they’re here, and they've _won,_ and Rick realizes that a bottle of wine is waiting for them on the counter.

Amanda’s already found out about their success. Knowing her, there are probably bugs sewn into their clothes, or else, she’s decided to keep it simple and tap his phone.

Who cares? _They did it._

They drink it together, passing the bottle back and forth as they kick their shoes into the corner and drop their coats on the bed. As Rick digs in the desk’s drawer for a pen and notepad to scribble down their findings, June folds her glasses on the desk, and vanishes into the bathroom to wipe the makeup off her face.

Then, once he produces them, she reappears, unbuttoning the top few buttons of her blouse, and sets loose a waterfall of information, spreading and closing her fingers in rhythm with her words. Anything and everything they know about the Enchantress is frantically scribbled on the paper by Rick as he reclines on the bed, watching June wander around the hotel room, occasionally pausing to share the bottle with him.

She can heal. She can teleport. She can fly. Her transformation is triggered by her name. She’s not immortal. She hates _Sabrina the Teenage Witch._ She has a temper. She’s the most arrogant, entitled, bratty creature known to man. She needs a host. She can be trapped in specially-crafted urns. She stinks. She hates June for not fading away, and Rick for not letting her.

She has a heart. A physical, beating heart that must be the source of her power, if she’s weak without it. Something tangible they can use against her.

They only stop when Rick’s hand is aching and the bottle has been drained completely. 

They’re two smart people with too much time on their hands. They don’t have to just sit here and wait for the axe to drop. They can do something. They can figure a way out of this. They don’t have to live with her. They can _control_ her. Maybe they've even taken the first steps towards getting rid of her completely.

June plops down next to him, rolling her fingers around the lip of the empty bottle, and she props her elbow further up on the bed, guiding his hand into her own. Her face catches the lamplight just so, and Rick’s heart catches in his chest when he sees her eyes, brighter than he’s ever seen them. Everything about her is just glowing with excitement.

To June, this is more than just a victory. This is more than just the promise of being able to control the monster inside her. This goes far beyond the Enchantress. This is the _future,_ opening itself to her after being closed off for so long, like a bright, gleaming banner unfurling for the first time in the wind.

This is the _beginning._ This is the opportunity for a new life in a new world, and she’s meeting it with her eyes wide open, ready to leap headfirst into it, no matter the consequences, no matter how afraid she may be.

This is _hope._

And he knows that all she has to do is say the word, and he’ll follow her, because June is simply one of the strongest people he’s ever met.

It’s a quiet kind of strength, one that’ll be noticed by few and praised by none. But it takes a certain kind of person to get up and carry on with their life after it’s come crashing down around them in a burning heap. She’s still here, still sane, after all the devastation, in spite of the monster lurking inside her, trying to force her to fade away. But she just _won’t._ June’s life is over, but that doesn’t mean she’s stopped living. She’s still reaching out, still trying, still enjoying things despite the darkness that’s constantly gnawing at her. It’s simple and profound and kind, just like she is, and he _loves_ it.

He loves _her._

“Are you going to kiss me, or not?”

It seems like she's been practicing saying this in her head for a very long time. Her words are quiet, and carefully measured, not a single one stumbled or uncertain. She's open to both acceptance and rejection. Shy, but not painfully so. The kind of shyness that makes him want to take her by the hand and travel with her through anything and everything.

Maybe it’s the wine, rushing to his head at last, making his thoughts expand like clouds, but Rick is struck with the sensation that this is something that’s been building for a very long time. Because of course it was. They'd been together for months, without anyone or anything to distract them. Something was bound to happen. Everyone knew it, from him to her to the people watching them, whether they'd admitted it or not.

There are going to be consequences for this, he knows, as June leans in and guides her cool fingers along the outline of his face, still waiting for him to respond. Someone is watching them, from within and without, thinking of all the ways they can use what’s happening to their advantage.

But he just doesn’t care.

This isn't exactly romance. He isn't even sure if they'll ever get there. Anything could happen.

But it's partnership and companionship and absolute trust, and he wouldn't trade it for the world.

And tonight is about beginnings, right? 

As he closes the distance between them, Rick decides that he's going to do everything in his power to make this one of them.


	5. it's a brave new world dawning

It feels a bit like brain surgery, June decides as she allows herself to lean against the space of smoothly-painted taupe wall between the bathroom counter and the door, carefully cracked ajar.

Scraps of conversation bleed through into the humid bathroom, and June feels the stirring of a certain someone rushing to the insides of her ears, pressing June closer to the voice.

And June fights it just enough. There’s a careful line she has to tread. Resist too much, and the witch won’t hear. Resist too little, and she’ll get suspicious. Brain surgery. She has to act first, and she has to refuse to see what the witch wants her too, but she has to be precise. Make one wrong move, and she loses the sick, twisted, unwinnable game she has to play if she wants to stay in control. She owes it to herself to at least try. She owes it to Rick and the world at large to succeed.

June nonchalantly runs her fingers through her damp hair, twisting it into a bun so tight, she can feel her scalp prickle, and leans in towards the mirror.

She smears the condensation out of the glass to peer at her face, trying to ignore the sensation that someone else is looking back at her from behind her eyes. Someone lurking in the shadows of the room, in the humidity still gathered below the ceiling. Someone who’s trying desperately to hide her preoccupation with Rick’s conversation, who tries to keep steering her eyeballs back towards the door.

June decides it’s probably best to wait a few minutes to put her contacts in.

It seems like she’s found the perfect balance. They’re hearing exactly what they need to, and the witch is none the wiser.

The heart is being moved, but where and when are still up in the air.

There we go. She’s uncertain, retreating further into the back of June’s mind, and there’s a slight fluttering brushing the inside of June’s temples.

She’s in a new place, surrounded by new things. And now her heart’s in danger. She won’t try anything. She can’t risk it, at least not until she finds out where it is.

They need to keep this up.

June’s thought of the logical next move already, but she has yet to play it.

 _As soon as possible,_ she decides.

June quickly puts her contacts in, and pauses to check herself in the mirror, feeling like a teenager checking for hickeys.

Not that there are any. _But just in case..._

Nope. Nothing. It’s almost funny. She doesn’t look any different, of _course_ she wouldn’t.

Then again, why would she?

Last night was big, but she gets the feeling like it won’t change much. This was just another boundary broken, and not even the largest one. It isn’t like sex is suddenly going to change everything, right? They’ve always been close. They’ve always touched frequently. And beyond that, he knows next to everything about her. They’re even developing their own language of in-jokes. This was just the next step, the next progression in whatever their relationship has become, because last night, they’d fallen into an area defined by gray, one that she gets the feeling they were drifting towards all along.

He’s easily her best friend, and perhaps her only one. He’s the person she trusts the most in the world, the only person she _can_ trust. The only person who’s come close to understanding what’s happening to her, the only person who’s giving her any kind of chance, the only person who sees her as more than a thing to possess.

She really doesn’t deserve him. Not with the blood on her hands, even though it wasn’t her who’d done the killing. Not with the monster inside her, because she knows the witch will use this somehow, even if she’d been suspiciously withdrawn for most of the night.

And if last night fucked it all up, if it destroyed the past four months of trust and growth and acceptance…

_No._

This wasn’t a mistake, it was a culmination. A beginning. The start of _something,_ and even though all the lines have blurred and faded into one another, she can tell that this something could be _good_ despite everything that’s surrounding them, everything that’s been set in motion to bring them together.

June just hopes that he sees it the same way that she does, because if he doesn’t…

She clasps her palms against the edge of the counter, gripping until her knuckles go white.

_Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm. This is good. This isn’t a mistake. He’s fine. I’m fine. I didn’t mess this up. He feels the same way I do, right? Right._

Rick goes silent, so his conversation with who June assumes is Waller is over, so it’s time for her to come out. She can’t hide in the bathroom forever.

June buttons up her shirt as she goes, blinking slightly as she adjusts to the dimness of the first few rays of morning slicing through the stiff red curtains of their hotel room.

And there he is, hunched over a collection of scattered notes, the product of their less-than-sober brainstorming last night. All the observations they’ve made about the witch, dictated by her and written by him on hotel stationery in faded ballpoint pen.

She still doesn’t exactly know what’s in them, or what else Rick has added that escaped her notice, but that’s for the better. The witch is learning to read, so they can’t afford to take any risks. She’s glimpsed just enough to be afraid, and she should be.

Rick looks up at her, and for a moment, everything inside June freezes over. All the what-ifs humming in her chest begin to roar in her ears and for a minute, she can see flashes of white whenever she blinks.

_What if this was a mistake, what if it was just the wine, what if I’m seeing something where there’s nothing, what if this is something they’re manipulating, what if I don’t deserve him, what if, what if, what if._

And then he smiles, and the roar softens to a purr. June knows what she is to him. She knows what he is to her.

She lets out a soft, almost imperceptible sigh that blooms into a smile so wide, it feels like she’s splitting her face in half. She doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and she can’t tell if it’s in relief or astonishment at how strange this is. June feels like the inside of her chest is glowing, and he can see it too.

She has a _boyfriend_ now.

June gets the sense that she’ll be the one leading them down this new path, wherever it takes them. Probably not anywhere good in the long-term, but everything is temporary, so she has to make the best of this while it lasts, because after all they've been through, and all they're probably going to go through, they both deserve something good.

So she guides his hand into her own, and leans into his side, quickly flicking the pages face-down before she can make out more than a few words. Something about the witch being more restless at night and the full moon. Something she’d suggested under the pleasant buzz of alcohol, that probably won’t hold much weight for long, but is still important to consider. After all, the nights are getting longer.

“So,” she says, pulling her legs up onto the bed, “What’s next?”

“Well,” he replies, immediately falling into his role, “First off, the rules about where we get to go have changed.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Second thing,” he says, counting off on his fingers, “We need to get this shit organized.”

He pats the haphazard pile of notes, and June nods in agreement. If they’re going to be sharing them, they need to be substantiated as much as possible. And they can’t look like a drunk thirty-something scribbled them down in less than ten minutes.

“And Amanda’s having the heart moved, but, uh, that’s all I can really say about that.”

“That’s great!”

The dense, ragged black cloud begins scraping at the inside of her skull, grinding into her like iron filings. _Oh, look who’s back._

Good. She needs to be sure the witch is paying attention.

This next thing, she hasn’t planned with him. Rick doesn’t know she’s about to do this, which is important. June has to act again, instead of waiting for someone else to move first. Not him, not Waller, not the witch, not ARGUS. _Her._

The whereabouts of her heart makes the witch nervous. But nervous isn’t enough.

June needs her to be terrified.

“Rick,” she begins, “I want to meet her. As soon as possible.”

And _boom._ The bristling cloud shrinks.

_Yeah, that’s what I thought._

Rick frowns as the wheels inside his head begin to turn.

“Why?”

“Because I want to figure this out,” June explains, “And she has access to things that could help me. I don’t want to just… sit around and hope that she’ll go away, because she won’t. That’s obvious. We might have figured something out that could help them, and I know they're researching her too. If they just _include_ us, it’ll be better for everyone.”

Rick stares at an empty space just behind June’s shoulder for a long while, and then he sighs.

“Where would you even meet her? I haven’t even seen the woman in months. She’s impossible to pin down.”

Okay, that’s actually something she hasn’t thought through.

“God, I don’t know, IHOP? Does it really matter? I mean, do _we_ decide that? Does she?”

“Oh, it’s definitely her,” Rick says, with a sour grin.

Great. One less thing she can control. Fine, so be it.

“So in the meantime,” June decides, “We can get everything together. Show her we’re serious.”

He nods, but he doesn't relax.

“It’ll be fine,” June says, brushing a comforting hand against his shoulder.

Neither acknowledges just how empty her words sound.

 

* * *

 

For whatever reason, the powers-that-be have decided they won’t be going back to the house. Maybe scrubbing that pentagram out of the floor is taking extra time.

Amanda Waller is coming for them, but they don’t know quite when. She’s a very busy woman, but no one Rick has called seems to know where she is or what she’s doing. The bombing at that congressional hearing that's plastered on every news channel June flips to has the entire country on its toes, so if June has to guess, she’s in D.C.

The hotel room in Midway is their home until further notice, and as long as they don’t leave the city, and don’t try to enter the museum, they can go where they want and do what they please. 

They’ll still be watched, of course. Midway has one of the most well-organized citywide surveillance systems in the country, at least, according to their website.

But June expected some kind of catch. She’s not stupid. There will always be eyes on her.

And honestly, the restriction suits her just fine. There’s this constant sensation of something tugging at her from the center of her chest, a kind of invisible, thread-thin line drawing her to constantly look off in the direction of the museum. If she doesn’t keep herself focused, she’ll find herself walking towards the door, or staring at the building’s roof from the hotel’s window. An extra pair of eyes is welcome, because Rick can only do so much.

She can’t let the witch get to it, if it’s even still there. If that limits her own ability to understand her parasite, so be it.

Aside from that, there’s an infinity of possibilities available to her now. Compared to a string of rooms and a yard, to reruns of sitcoms and carefully censored internet, it’s like she’s been dropped on another planet, and told, _go ahead, it’s all yours._ It’s almost disorientating, but she’s _excited._

This is temporary, she knows it is. She has to make the most of it. She has to get outside, stretch her legs, see and feel and _do_ before things change again, while the witch is still too shaken to play with her mind.

The trails are off limits, she knows that for certain. Too few people, too many wild things. Too many things the witch is familiar with, things that might make her brave. Things that might reverse the progress she and Rick have made, and that they plan to continue.

So that leaves the city itself.

June decides to cage the witch in concrete and glass and technology, and keep her caught up in a shifting kaleidoscope of people.

And it works. The witch is crouched in on herself within June, too shaken to make a move.

She likes the sensation so much that within a day of their first outing, Rick and June begin spending the entire day outside. From sunrise to sunset, they’re out, wandering streets that are awake and bustling with businesspeople and natives until their feet go numb, until they return to their hotel room for a late night of careful research. They try every single street food they can get their hands on, and brave the early November air until it doesn’t bother her at all when it seeps up from the ground to run it’s teeth along her ankles.

They go where the crowd is thickest, letting it carry them anywhere and everywhere except the museum. They walk for miles, take the most crowded buses, explore every immaculate corner of Midway’s ingeniously organized subway system.

The city makes June feel just a bit adrift, just a bit claustrophobic. She’s not used to how crowded everything is, after months of isolation in a small house in the country. Her neck aches from the number of times she’s looked up at the skyscrapers around her, at the apartments perched above stores, rising story after story, slicing the pale gray sky into ribbons. The urban noise is so dense and loud it makes June’s ears ring, and the people pressing in on her from all sides make her chest hum with scattered energy.

Or maybe it’s not the people.

There’s something else, a rhythmic pulse running beneath the streets and between the people. Calling to her, but not in the parasitic pull of the heart.

Well, it _can_ be addictive. It can also be ecstatic or horrifying or fascinating. June gets the sense that it can be anything.

Everywhere they go, the pulse shifts, like they’re walking inside the veins of something alive and breathing. Some kind of great, planet-sized being made of mist, prickling on the air like dust motes in sunlight. Something not unlike the witch, but insidious by circumstance, not nature.

Something like another world, somehow flawlessly entwined within and without this one. A world where words are woven into the fabric of reality, where objects might be smarter or more alluring or more articulate than she is, where you might just disappear into a room for years and emerge having aged days.

Something like magic.

And it’s here, all around her, maybe even charged by the heart’s presence in the city.

June can feel it, rushing through her and charging her veins and nerves with energy that excites the witch as much as it does her.

But for some reason, the witch isn’t happy about it. She’s used to finding magic in the dark of the night, in utter isolation, in wild places where no human has ever walked, in crumbling palaces and temples that still hold the ghosts of dead civilizations within their walls.

This is a different breed entirely. This is something that unsettles her, but perhaps not just because it’s foreign to her. This is something that June can see and understand and maybe even hope to reach, and that scares them both.

Rick, for whatever reason, can’t. He looks at a crow on a drooping power line and sees a crow. He sees streets that don’t change, he doesn’t hear voices calling to him from long forgotten spaces between buildings, he doesn’t feel something tugging on him from the underside of his skin, telling himself there’s something more to the vague illumination of sputtering streetlamps than he’s seeing.

But that’s good, in a way. For once, there’s something she knows more about than he does (And she gets the feeling that it annoys him just the slightest bit, which, in her opinion, is actually kind of adorable). And she needs him to keep her from falling into the cracks when they’re out walking, because as sudden and foreign and utterly _strange_ as this all is, June isn’t scared. She’s _excited._

If it weren’t for the presence of Rick, the only thing she has to lose, the only thing anchoring her to here and now and fact and reality, June might indulge the wild urges that are beginning to supersede the witch’s pressing presence and her constant demands to go to her heart. The urges that tell her to follow the stray cats that don’t look quite like stray cats as they dart in and out of narrow alleyways that simply aren’t there again when they walk back the way they came.

She might find herself on the underside of a bridge, reading the graffiti sprayed on it's sides aloud, maybe even indulge her long-buried artistic drive to create a few of her own, just to see what they’d do.

She might slip into one of the south side pawn shops with the flickering neon signs that light up as she passes under them, and the curios that stare back at her when she peers through the cracked, dust-stained windows, and simply never come out again.

She might reach out to the sunlight flashing on the blonde hair of a teenage girl as she leans in to kiss her boyfriend goodbye when Midway’s high schools let out every day at three, or the glare off the water of Lake Huron right as the sun peeks above it, and try to hold it in her hands.  

And as the days go on, as June and Rick wander the streets of Midway City, never visiting the same place twice, she knows that if she were to reach out, to stretch her fingers past what Rick can see, she can draw them back with bright points of light like candle flames on each fingertip. Magic is more than something June can see, it's something she can _touch,_ something she knows she can reach.

She wants to, she does. But that would be too much. Too much leeway for the witch to play with, too much uncertainty. Besides, how much of this is just because of the witch’s heart, reaching out to the city and imbuing it with it’s own magic?

Or is it something that’s always been here, something that’s always been _everywhere?_ Something June just hasn’t seen until now?

And if she hasn’t seen it, why? Is it because of her possession? Or is it something that’s been in her all this time, that she’s denied and suppressed because she simply hadn’t thought it was real? 

It’s too early to tell, June knows. Too early for comfort.

And besides, she can’t indulge it. Even without the constant threat of an intelligent, malevolent thing ready to pounce on the slightest opportunity, she wouldn’t know where to start. And if June has learned nothing else from the past few months, it’s that magic is immensely dangerous. Far too dangerous for someone to play with without understanding the first thing about it.

She has to settle for observing. And for now, that’s fine.

There’s so much for June to explore, so many things to try to understand.

If it helps her find a way to fight back against the witch, she’ll take it. If not, June can settle for learning about the world she’s from. Every small thing she finds is a victory. She may not be able to gather all those small triumphs together yet, but she knows that someday, she will. Someday, something will give, and they’ll find a way to exorcise the demon inside her.

Things are starting to make a strange kind of sense, and she’s going to cling to it with everything she has.

 

* * *

 

And then, at around midnight, everything changes again.

This time, it comes in the form of Rick nudging her awake as he climbs out of bed and switches on the television, staring at a ribbon of bright type scrolling along the bottom of the television screen like a death sentence.

June takes one look at Rick, and finds that all the color is gone from his face. His phone clatters from his hand to the ground, and she crawls out of bed after him. And then she’s physically rooted in place, like a statue perched on the edge of the mattress, forced to watch by the witch. She's somehow even more invested than Rick is.

It feels like June is hovering in an empty, freezing space as she watches, and again, the only thing grounding her is his hand in hers. She squeezes it so tightly she knows that when she pulls her fingers away, she’ll have left deep fingernail marks in his palm. He in turn grips hers so tightly, she can feel the bones of her hand grinding up against one another.

All three of them watch in silence, bathed by bright, artificial colors, as shaky, sputtering news camera footage shows clouds of jade-green and dusky gray-brown smoke and dust flare up over Stryker’s Island. Gods and monsters, glowing with radiation, tearing into one another, caught in the midst of a massive orange electrical storm that turns glass to mist and brick to dust.

It takes less than an hour for the fight to end, but in that brief span of time, it feels like the world has stopped spinning.

And then the news begins replaying the footage again and again, and the spell is broken.

As always, in the aftermath of the breaking world, Rick’s phone starts ringing.

 

* * *

 

June has never been to a funeral before, let alone one for a person (and that’s what he was in the end, a _person)_ she’s never met.

Technically speaking, she still isn’t.

But she dresses for one, all the same.

A cashmere skirt that does nothing to protect against the cold that nips at her legs from beneath it. A black silk blouse, buttoned all the way to the throat, that feels a bit like a stiff fingertip is pressing on the base of her neck. A pair of kitten heels that pinch her toes and nearly trip her as she walks out of the hotel lobby and into the stream of humanity surging into the city’s heart.

But they’re not following it.

Instead, June and Rick slice through the rush and it parts peacefully around them.

They deserve every dirty look that finds them. They should be joining the crowd as it stands in silent vigil on the waterfront, paying tribute to a man who’d died saving them.

There’s an odd heaviness to the silence inside her head, like the parasite’s grieving too. But that doesn’t make sense.

There are a lot of things that June doesn’t know about the witch, but she’s beginning to trust her instincts again. And they’re telling June that if he were to ever cross paths with her, they would be on opposing sides.

Superman had been a hero. June has known this from the day he’d first appeared in the skies above Metropolis. When the ground had stopped rumbling and she’d ventured out onto the streets, coated in clinging dust, she had seen _him,_ a distant flash of red among all the gray, and she had known that he was there to help. 

After everything that’s happened, she still believed it, and now, finally, the rest of the world agrees with her. He had lived a hero, and he had died a hero. They’d been wrong. It's as simple as that.

But the world won’t be wrong about _her._  She’s a monster, plain and simple. June won’t give her a chance to try to convince her or anyone else otherwise.

Superman is dead, so it falls to them, to _her,_ to take care of the world now.

And that feeling is telling her that the monster inside her is now it’s greatest threat.

So maybe it’s okay that they’re skipping his funeral, since in a very small way, she’s continuing his work.

June is holding the binder like a shield against what’s waiting for her behind the door. Her fingers clutch it so tightly, she starts wondering if she’ll lose circulation in them. It feels like her wildly thudding heart is going to burst out of her chest, so she tightens her hold on it, so it can bounce off the binder when it does, and land right back in her chest cavity.

There’s a voice repeating a single phrase over and over in her mind. _Open it, open it, open it._

But then it goes abruptly silent as they enter the restaurant.

It’s completely deserted. No customers. Not even a single person in the kitchen. There’s a single well-dressed man standing in front of a section of the restaurant isolated by sheets of frosted glass. From months of being close to Rick, June can recognize the ripple in the fabric of his suit jacket that gives away a concealed gun.

When Rick and June move to pass him, his hand stretches out and catches Rick in the center of his chest.

“Just her,” he says.

Rick’s eyes harden, and he sets his jaw, but he stands aside, without waiting for her go ahead.

It should bother her, how quick he is to step aside. But it doesn’t. He can’t protect her from anything. Not the witch, not Waller. He knows it, no matter how much he wishes otherwise.

She doesn’t want him to. He’s not here to keep her safe from the world. He’s here to keep the world safe from her.

June steps inside, and quietly thanks the guard for holding the door open for her.

Off to the side, in a corner booth, sits Amanda Waller, all in black, like the rest of the city. Her back is to June, but she still gets the feeling that she’s watching her.

June waits until the door closes behind her before she moves. She crosses the room quickly, and slides into the open seat opposite Waller. She crosses her legs at the ankles, straightens her glasses, and stares at Waller’s folded fingers, at her perfect jet-black manicure, and wonders if there's blood hidden under her nails.

“You look better since the last time I saw you,” she says in a voice that cuts straight to the center of June like a hot knife.

“I, uh… Thank you, Dr. Waller. It’s good to see you again.”

No, it isn’t, and they both know it.

“Doctor?”

“Well… yes. That’s what you _are,_ right?”

That’s what the Google search said. Amanda Waller, doctor in political science, formerly affiliated with the CIA. Sure, she works in government, not academia, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have the education.

Waller smiles, like a shark who’s just scented blood. Maybe it’s not Superman’s funeral she’s dressed for.

“Yes. I suppose so.”

“May I call you that?”

“I don’t see why not.”

The witch is quiet. Tense, searching for any sign of a threat.

June really needs to do the same.

Dr. Waller lifts her fork to her mouth, and takes a small bite of the omelette in front of her.

“Oh?” she says, raising an eyebrow when June glances down at her plate, “I hope you don’t mind, I ordered for us. The cooks were _very_ insistent about getting to that vigil.”

She shrugs nonchalantly, like the death of a hero happens every week, then gestures across the table. In front of June is a plate with a short stack of pancakes coated with strawberry-flavored syrup and a mug of black coffee. Exactly what June gets every time she comes here, even though it’s been almost a year since she's last eaten out.

“Won’t you eat?”

June stares at the pancakes, trying to keep her face neutral. _They’re drugged, they’re poisoned, something’s wrong with them. This was all just a giant trap and I’ve walked right into it._

No.

No, they’re not. This isn’t a trap, she isn’t going to die.

Or if she does, wouldn’t that be a _good_ thing? Then the witch would die with her, and everyone would be safe. Win-win.

But she'll probably be fine, because this is a power play. That’s why they’re meeting at IHOP, of all places, because it had been a phrase in a conversation June had with Rick over a week ago. She wants June to know that she’s been watching and listening for a very long time, that she’s gone digging into June’s past for long-buried skeletons, not that she’ll find any. She wants June to be afraid of her.

But the thing is, she’s _not._ Not at all.

There’s been someone far worse living inside her for the better part of a year. If June can survive her, she can survive Waller too. And, in order to do so, she’ll have to play her game as well, but in the exact opposite of the way she's been playing with the witch. To last more than a second, June needs to let her lead, and follow her without complaint, with her eyes wide open. 

June takes a sip of the coffee, and lets the burning, bitter sensation draw her mind the rest of the way out of the clammy fog that’s threatening to swallow her judgment.

She takes the first bite, waiting for the sting of poison that never comes, and her eyes find Amanda’s.

_I’m not afraid of you._

Something in Amanda’s expression shifts. It seems almost like respect. It won’t last long.

“I understand you have something for me,” she says, eyeing the binder tightly confined in the crook of her elbow.

June pushes the binder across the table, towards Amanda’s waiting hands.

“It’s everything we figured out about her so far. It’s not a lot, but I’m hoping that can change.”

“How, exactly?”

June draws in a deep breath.

“I want to work with ARGUS. If I show you what I know, you could help me take it a step further. There's only so much either of us can do on our own, and I think it would be best if we work together, because we both want to control her.”

Wrong. June wants her _gone._ But controlling her is the first step to getting rid of her. And if controlling her is the best she'll ever get, she'll take it.

Amanda thumbs through the pages of printouts, scanning each sentence meticulously.

All their brainstorming, carefully researched, polished, typed out and printed by Rick, all without June so much as catching a glimpse of it. Pages of annotations on Luthor’s Metahuman Thesis and information on all the ancient civilizations June’s been able to trace the witch to, that June's contributed her wealth of knowledge to. All things the witch already knows, that would have nothing to do with containing her, just about who she was before she'd been trapped in an urn. And surprisingly, she's been fine with June seeking this information out. She _wants_ people to know who she was, and who she thinks she is. There's even an exact age.

June probes the ragged, syrup-saturated remains of her pancake with her fork, and waits for Amanda to finish. She wants to lean over, and comment on each of the items she’d contributed, but she gets the sense that Amanda doesn’t like to hear anyone other than herself talk.

She settles for glancing around the room. One of the lights to her left has a busted bulb. The remnants of Amanda’s omelette are spilled like entrails across her plate. Someone has scratched _R.A. Forever_  into the tabletop, and the ring of moisture left behind by her coffee mug looks vaguely like a crop circle. Waller’s well-worn briefcase is slightly open, and she can see a folder sticking out of it.  Curiosity begins burrowing beneath June’s skin, and she struggles to stifle it. This is a dangerous time to start nosing into places she shouldn’t.

At last, Amanda closes it, and June hurries to meet her gaze again.

“Now, how much control _do_ you have over the Enchantress, Dr. Moone?”

June struggles not to flinch at the name, biting the inside of her cheek.

That’s intentional too. She knows that June is afraid of the name, afraid that if she hears it, sees it, or even thinks it, it’ll spill out of her lips. She’s trying to scare her again.

How does she answer this? She has more control over the witch than she’s had in months, but it’s all temporary. It would be naive to think otherwise.

But if she admits she has none, what will happen to her then?

“Not enough,” she finally says, “But you want to help me with that.”

A statement, not a question. She needs to sound certain. She's not the scared, shaking girl Waller met months ago. She knows what she's dealing with better than anyone in the world, and the sooner Amanda realizes it, the better off they'll all be.

“I do.”

“Because you want to use her.”

Amanda's dark eyes gleam. _There._ An open acknowledgement of what all of this is. Hopefully, this means they can move behind the pretense. Hopefully, her wording was just precise enough to keep herself safe.

“Superman is dead.”

“I know. I saw.”

“But there are others like him who aren’t. The metahuman phenomenon is here to stay. And without him to keep them at bay, we stand a real chance at a crisis here.”

_What is she saying?_

“I’m in the process of creating a project to deal with similar threats, and I think you could be an asset.”

This isn’t about information. It never was. Why _would_ it be, since Amanda already knows everything June’s offering her, she already knows that this was just an excuse for June to get to meet face-to-face with her. Amanda wants her to think this is about cooperation, but her cooperation is hardly more than a formality at this point. She already owns her.

This is about luring June deeper down the rabbit hole, under the guise that she’s the one crawling in herself.

“You want me to fight _metahumans?”_

Fighting is _not_ her thing. She can’t throw a punch or shoot a gun. She wouldn’t stand a chance against a person with powers like the witch’s. Like Superman’s. Like whoever else is out there.

But she’ll probably have to, because last night, the world shifted on it’s axis, and she doesn’t like the way the change that’s coming seems to be headed.

“No, Dr. Moone. I don’t want _you_ to.”

Amanda leans over, slips her hand into her briefcase, and pulls out the folder she’d been eyeing a moment ago.

June stares at the emblem, at the arrows, the double helix, the Vitruvian man. This is the first time she’s actually been able to read the writing beneath it. All the other times she’d seen it, she’d been without her glasses, or she’d simply been too tired to care.

It’s Latin. A phrase that, when she translates it, makes her blood turn ice-cold.

 _Our search begins_.

For who?


	6. like a man or like a monster

There had been a time, in the far and distant past, when Waylon Jones had been afraid of the dark.

But his aunt had remedied him of it soon enough.

Usually when she’s home, she ignores him, passed out in front of the tiny little television, surrounded by a garden of glass bottles and the acrid stench of liquor hanging around her like a cloud.

But sometimes she doesn’t, and it’s almost like he can see a shortening fuse attached to her head whenever he crosses into her line of sight. And there’s really no way to avoid her, since their apartment is as cramped as it is, and going outside will only lead to the same result from dozens of people rather than just the one, and he’d really rather avoid being chased down the streets of Bushwick by a vicious mob of children wielding bludgeons made of ash-stained brick.

She stares at him like a stain she can’t wash out of her favorite dress, muttering on whiskey-tainted breath about the animal her sister whelped, about the last words dedicated to saddling her with an unwanted nephew to raise.

He gets it, he does. There’s no helping what he is, no matter how many times his aunt pulls out the wire brush and drags him by his elbow into the bathroom, trying in vain to scrub away the scales, to draw out the person she believes is hidden beneath the animal.

And he allows it, because he keeps thinking, against all logic, that if she can just peel away the ugliness, she’ll find him buried beneath. Then he’ll never have to brave the vicious looks again. He’ll never have to worry every time he leaves the apartment. He might even be able to go back to school, or go see that space wars movie the kids down the hall have been reenacting every day for the past two months. He might have friends someday, and pretend that he didn’t spend the first nine years of his life as the creature from the black lagoon.

Those strange thoughts that keep creeping up in the back of his head, about biting into the soft skin of her forearm whenever she gets too close? Those’ll go away too, if it happens.

But he knows better. One of the first things he learned about his skin is that it can’t be broken or peeled away. It stays the same mottled tan color no matter what.

And the scales simply don’t break. Not when grated by a wire brush, not when beaten by fists or bottles or stones or bricks.

There are no bruises to be covered. There are no cuts to heal.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. That doesn’t mean Waylon doesn’t go to sleep most nights with a hand pressed to his cheek and an aching hollowness in his stomach because he’d decided he’d rather be hungry than risk facing her.

But if he’s quick, and he’s quiet, he knows a way to avoid her wrath.

See, that’s the thing about darkness. It’s only frightening until you realize it’s a place to hide.

If he stands perfectly still in the dark corners of their home when the power to their apartment dies every now and again, she’ll forget he exists.

So on that boiling night in July, when the lights go out, he doesn’t give it much of a thought at first. If anything, it’s comforting, because now he can move from one wall to another without her casting a glance his way.

It’s the silence that bothers him.

The noise from the crowd gathered outside in hopes of finding some escape from the heat wave is gone. And then there’s a rolling, collective gasp, as they realize that something is wrong.

Waylon has always been good at seeing in the dark, so it takes him a few minutes to realize what that something is.

There’s simply _no light_ coming from the windows.

It isn’t just their apartment. It’s their entire street and beyond. It’s like all of New York has simply vanished into blue-black darkness.

Even though it’s utterly lightless, he can make out the dimensions of the street quite clearly, the rippling of the dozens of people gathered, rumbling like nervous storm clouds.

He isn’t sure who’s the first to panic, but once it begins, there’s no stopping it.

Suddenly, there’s a cacophony of screeching tires, the rattling as storefronts snap their metal shields down, the screams of the people, the tearing of metal and wood and the tinkling smash of glass.

Below him, the streets are in chaos.

Waylon spends the entire night hanging halfway out the window, watching as the stores empty out and the building across from him erupts into flame. And he wants to be down there, in the midst of the bedlam, where no one will think twice about a boy with the skin of a reptile. He wants to break things just to feel them snap in his hands. He wants to take things just because he can. He wants to taste whatever wild, vicious virus has infected the people below him.

But his aunt is here, so he doesn’t dare.

The next morning, when the sun’s just barely peeking over the buildings, he checks to be sure that she’s out cold, and then steps outside for the first time in years, the oppressive heat and the stench of burnt-out buildings draping themselves like a heavy fur coat across his shoulders and stifling his nostrils.

He crouches hesitantly for just a moment in the shadowed corner of the narrow alley behind his tenement, feeling the fur of a stray cat brush against his leg as it hurries away.

And then he starts walking, peering through cracked windows before they’re boarded up, at lives so different they may as well be playing on television screens. Happy lives in vibrant Technicolor. The entire street feels too large to him, like something’s going to swoop in from the sky and carry him away, so Waylon walks quickly, sticking close to the sides of crumbling buildings, still streaked with ash from the fires of both last night and the nights long before.

The ever-present worry snakes it's way back into his head. The one about when his own tenement will meet a similar end, because these days, his landlord can get more from the insurance money than the rent. And everyone knows where that leads.

He doesn't like the thought, so he starts meeting the furtive gazes of the people who dive out of his path and hiss to each other when he passes by. He imagines their skin grinding between his teeth whenever their words dig into his scales.

 _What?_ he mouths at them. _What?_

But he never gets a response. They’re cowards, all of them, shying away when he raises his head to challenge them.

Except for one, a girl maybe ten years older than him, with a corona of thick black curls and a neat plaid skirt who sits in the shade of his tenement steps when he finally circles back around. When he stares her down, thinking about breaking her smooth brown fingers between his own, she just smiles and wiggles them to draw him in.

And, like a fish caught on a line, he follows, his fists balled so tightly his nails dig into his palms.

He knows her, he realizes, though he doesn’t know her name. She lives on his floor, two doors down. Sometimes, she passes him in the hallway when he dares himself to step outside. She’s never spoken to him before, but he knows she’s had a front row seat to everything that’s happened to him since he’d moved in a while ago.

Waylon doesn’t quite know what to say to her, so he settles for a sharp, confrontational, “What?”

She tilts her head like a cat, brown eyes narrowing, and giggles. But she isn’t laughing at him. She’s laughing _with_ him, at a private joke he hasn’t been told to yet, one that she assumes he must already know.

He waits for her to stop, arms tightly folded in front of his chest. He definitely isn’t pouting.

“So,” she finally says, waving an arm at their surroundings, “Power’s still out.”

That’s not what he expected at all. He honestly has no idea how to carry any kind of conversation with someone that doesn’t revolve around the way he looks.

“... Yeah, so?”

“Y’think tonight’s gonna be the same? More crazy shit? My uncle thinks so, so he's boardin' up the store.”

Another long, uncomfortable silence. She’s starting to tap her feet irritably. This was a bad idea. He should have just kept walking.

“I don’t _know.”_

“Well,” she says, leaning back on her elbows, glancing down at her chipped silver nail polish disdainfully,  _“I_ don’t think so. Y’know why?”

_“No.”_

“It’s ‘cause now everybody knows how they’re gonna react. See, y’turn off the lights, and everybody turns into wild animals. Turn ‘em back on, and they hide it again. They walk around, pretendin’ they weren’t the same people who were stealin’ an’ settin’ things on fire the night before. Bunch a’ hypocrites, in my opinion. No wonder they get _nervous_ when they see someone like you.”

“Why?” he asks, already bracing himself for a hit.

She jabs the end of her cigarette at him, and he flinches, “You wear your animal on the outside. You know, I like that. You’re tougher than all a’ Brooklyn rolled together, ‘cause they’re all afraid a’that.”

Waylon blinks.

 _“Why_ ’re they scared?”

She stares at him for a long moment, and if Waylon didn't know better, he'd say that she looks just a bit sad.

He quickly drops his gaze to the two long thin trails of smoke flitting out of her nose before they rise to singe his eyes, and she finally speaks, "‘Cause y’got _power_ over ‘em. They look at _you,_ an’ they see _them_ on the inside, but they don’t know what t’do with it. So they stare. Or they hide. Or they chase you around an’ throw crap at you, right?”

Oh. She saw _that_ too. Great. He's done here.

Waylon carefully steps around her, and begins the trek up the rickety steps.

“You gotta be _proud_ a’that, y’hear me?”

_What?_

“You gotta _own_ that shit,” he hears her voice echo from the bottom of the stairwell,  “Otherwise it’s gonna own you. You gotta _take_ that power, or they’re gonna keep treatin’ you like a load a’ shit.”

He doesn’t stop walking, doesn’t turn around, doesn’t call to her over his shoulder.

Still it’s like her words have sunk into him through the cracks of his scales, because they keep repeating, like a broken record, inside his head.

_Your animal’s on the outside. Take that power. Be proud of it._

That night, when his aunt remembers he exists, and that he’d been gone for most of the day, he remembers those words.

And when her bottle crashes down like the wrath of an angry god, his skin doesn’t break.

But when his teeth close around her hand, her fingers do.

 

* * *

 

His time in the circus gifts him with many things.

His teeth, filed into fangs. He doesn’t remember who suggested it, him or one of the performers, but he likes the result. He likes how it helps him blend in (not _fit in,_ never _fit in,_ because he never will, because he’s not _really_ an animal, no matter how much he wants to be) with the alligators in his sideshow tank. He likes how easy it is to tear into his food. He likes the gasps he elicits when he gets close to a pretty face and gives her a smile.

It should bother him, but it’s power, right? Power over their fear. And he’ll take it, because he gets the sense that it’s the only thing he’ll ever be able to control when they look at him.

His strength, unmatched by any man or animal he’s ever wrestled. No one- not the circus strongman, not the big cats, not the alligators he lives with- has ever been able to defeat him.

And that’s his role. The crocodile man in the costume that sticks to his skin like a toxin, to be wrestled every night by the strongman in a comedic skit that lasts exactly three minutes, to throw the match every time and let the masses laugh at his failure, though even when he was a preteen he’d known he could have thrown the man across the ring like a rag doll if he had wanted to.

When he has the man’s neck locked tightly in his arms in the midst of their ‘fights,’ he knows he could twist it around as easily as if it were a pigeon’s, or else dig his sharpened teeth in and rip at the tubes he spends far too much time watching as they pulse beneath the skin.

He never does, but still, he wonders.

_What if, what if I just let go for just a second..._

He never does. That’s what the alligators are for.

He wrestles them during the day, in front of the cheering, jeering crowds. He breaks their backs with his bare hands, and tells himself, _this is what power feels like._

But all that power he feels means nothing, because he’s still separated from the animals that _matter,_ that think and sneer and snarl, by bars and panes of glass. The reaction he gets from them isn’t power, not _really,_ because at the end of the day, they can leave and he can’t. Snapping alligator spines won’t do anything to make the stares bounce harmlessly off his armored skin.

They come to see him because they want him to scare them, because they don’t understand what they’re seeing. He isn’t a man, but he isn’t an animal either. He’s something in between, with all the lines warped and tangled together in one big ugly knot. He’ll never be one or the other, that’s the joke, isn’t it? That’s why they laugh, because they know it and he doesn’t.

And he is so goddamn _tired_ of being the punchline to someone else’s joke, because there is nothing funny about him.

They look at him and shriek and giggle and smear the glass with their grubby paws, and he looks back, crouched in the middle of his swampy habitat with strips of raw chicken hanging from the gaps between his teeth and the metallic tang of blood clinging to his tongue.

 _Who cares?_ he wants to scream and beat at the bars, _you people ain’t no joy to look at either!_

The shock fades to excited laughter and beaming smiles, but when animals smile, they’re just baring their teeth. And these animals are so deeply hidden in their people suits that they’ve forgotten themselves. Or else, they’re just very good at lying.

They look at him and they are not afraid. He’s an animal in a zoo to be pointed at and observed safely from a distance. And the circus does nothing to dissuade them, because he knows they’re making money off of him, money that he never sees.

He wonders what it would be like to tear through the barrier (because he _could),_ to tear through the crowd.

Then they’ll see.

He’ll taste their fear, the same way he’d tasted his aunt’s the night he’d run away. The animals they’re hiding will wake up and tear loose of their human skins, and he’ll hunt them all down, because he knows the truth they hide deep within them, the truth they suppress and deny with everything inside them. They're _all_ animals, snarling and hissing beneath human faces.

He just wears his truth on the outside, and they’ve punished him for it because they're ashamed.

Him? He isn’t.

 

* * *

 

So he goes to a place that suits the darkness in him, that he hopes will be more honest.

Gotham City is a reservoir of the filthy and depraved, a city that’s bracing itself for a storm of violence that’s sure to come when the monster that sleeps in it’s depths awakens.

Is it any wonder that it’s calling to him?

There’s something profoundly reassuring about how Gotham wears its ugliness on it’s sleeve, with it’s less-than-reputable stores shuttered and pretending to blend in with their honest neighbors, it’s seedy sex hostels side by side with old, fading motels, and it's streets laying open like a sewer before him, swollen with rainwater and stinking with decay.

Something that understands him on a deep and long-neglected level, something that tells him there might be a place for him here, if only he can find it.

But as it turns out, even Gotham is lying. The city of monsters-to-come keeps its doors tightly closed when he arrives. Even though it’s quite honest about it’s own sickness, it still won’t accept the people who understand it.

No one will rent to someone who looks like him, even with the circus money he’d snatched on his way out, not even the cramped sharehouses that bundle people together and roll them all up inside each other’s nonsense and noise.

So for a very long time, Waylon sleeps in the space between a graffiti-covered dumpster and a brick wall.

No one will hire someone who looks like him, let alone a man who’s never finished school, who spent his teenage years in a glorified fish tank. Even the dealers and hustlers shy away, treating him like he’s just arrived from another planet.

So when the money dries up, he buries his face in a hood and sits on a street corner every day, at the mouth of a subway fed by people of all shapes and incomes who rush from one door to the next like rabbits avoiding hawks. He holds a dented cardboard sign out, staring at passing feet that will never have to walk barefoot in the cold, that carelessly sweep tattered dollar bills that stick to the damp street away from him, as the people they belong to are content to forget that he’s there.

And then someone complains to the only useful cops in the city, and he’s quietly relocated into the worst of the slums, where there is nothing to beg for because everyone else is just a bit less desperate than he is, where he listens to the howling of gangs that patrol and clash over their territories in the dead of night like packs of starving wolves.

There’s no money to be found here, so he shifts tactics, and spends his time tunneling through dumpsters for scraps.

And then it gets colder and colder. His scales begin to crack and bleed as frost begins to dust over the city, and the stores in the neighborhood wisen to him, and lock their trash down.

He starts wondering if he was being called here at all. It begins to feel more like he’s been lured, that Gotham’s sprung closed around him like a giant bear trap, and it’s waiting for him to gnaw off one of his limbs to escape, or curl up and die. He has no intention of doing either.

He looks more and more to the steam rising from the sewer grates, the breath of the sleeping monster, and his thoughts circle back again and again to the hollowness in his stomach, and his quiet, simmering resentment of the people who pass him by.

It finally comes to a boil late in the night, when he’s beginning to think his fingers have permanently frozen into fists, and his thoughts seem to be wrapped in a grainy film.

The snow-coated streets are washed over with the rust-colored glow of the street lamps, and the city swims before his eyes, like he’s caught in the middle of a field of static. He can’t tell if it’s because of the snow or his own hunger-induced daze.

There’s a single, shuffling man outside, and though he doesn’t know his name, Waylon knows his face. He’s an irregular fixture across from the corner Waylon has frequented for the past few days, one of the many men ferreting drugs through the veins of the city.

He finds himself staring at the pulsing of the blood in the man’s neck, and something nameless and primal compels Waylon to follow.

It takes eight blocks for the man to find his apartment, and on the walk up a cold, cramped hall that stinks of sweetened animal fur, he never once notices that his shadow is much too large.

Waylon waits in the doorway, watching as the man throws his coat over the back of a chair and plays with the light switch, cursing under his breath before giving up.

_Look at me, look at me, look at me._

After forever passes, the man turns to close the door, and starts at the sight of him. The whites of his eyes grow and the air in the room tenses, like a spring drawn taut.

Waylon doesn’t allow himself to think too much about what happens next.

But to be honest, there really isn’t much _thinking_ to it.

It’s just a blur of brown giving way to red and white, a crunch between his fingers and a squish as he digs them into something spongy and wet that bursts when he closes his fist. The man’s skin parts under his teeth with the strength of soaked tissue paper, and he likes it.

The shrieking and keening makes his ears ring, and he finds something deeply satisfying in the splash of blood against a dusty brick wall, followed by the smear as the misshapen body slides downward.

And the taste…

The next time Waylon remembers himself, his face is wet with blood, and the man is smeared across his barren, shabby apartment, soaking through the cracks between the floorboards.

And there’s a pinkish-red glob of vomit on the floor between his sticky hands.

He blinks, smears viscera off his mouth and runs his hands over his pants, glancing around.

_Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it._

There’s not much to the apartment other than a few pieces of furniture in varying states of disarray, and a faint, sagging mattress propped up on a rusted bed frame in the corner. The whole place is small enough for him to cross it in a handful of strides, and it’s still cold enough for him to see his breath, stinking of gore, steaming in front of him.

Waylon starts at the realization that the door is still open. He quickly closes it, slippery hand losing it’s grip on the knob. As it shuts, it rattles paper-thin walls that do nothing to block out the the squabbling of the children in the unit downstairs and the drunken argument of a pair of prostitutes from down the hall. If he can hear them through a closed door, they’ve certainly heard him a few minutes ago.

But something tells him the police won’t be coming here tonight. At least, not for him. The most he’ll have to worry about is someone knocking on the door, looking for a hit.

And if they do, he’s too tired to care. Besides, he’s strong enough to tear his way through an entire precinct before they succeed in arresting him. And he knows from experience that even ordinary bullets won’t pierce his skin.

Waylon stumbles over to the bed, and collapses, listening to the groan of a single unsnapped mattress spring as it struggles to accommodate his weight.

He huffs, staring up at the soot blackening the cheap tile of the ceiling, a ghost from the room’s former occupant, and runs his hands along the outline of his empty stomach.

The room is filling with a smell that his mind keeps circling back to, and the gnawing emptiness in his stomach keeps him awake for hours, until the blood smeared on his face has hardened into a crust and he can see lances of pinkish winter sunlight pierce the blinds above his head.

Eventually, someone will have to call the cops. If it isn’t the smell, or the sound, it’ll be the flickering tenants that darted inside their doors like frightened mice when they’d so much as seen a glimpse of his face on his way down the hall.

Someone will certainly talk about the monster lurking in the hallway.

He’ll need to move on.

He thinks back, again, to the maintenance tunnels riddling the underside of the city, to the hot rush of steam rising from the grate near his corner.

He can go there. He’d be warm. There’ll be no one to turn him away, no one to turn on him. And he’s never had a problem with seeing in the dark. He’ll be just fine.

… He’ll be _more_ than fine. He can do more than just survive.

He remembers what he’d first thought when he’d come here. An ugly city, where an ugly creature like him might fit in. It hadn’t accepted him, but that’s not how it works, is it? Gotham is a city that swallows its weakest residents, and salivates over those who are left.

Since the minute he’d set foot here, he’s been doing it wrong. He has to fight for his place, claim it in blood and fear, just like he’d done tonight.

Waylon, in a few glorious seconds, had claimed something he couldn’t obtain in months. He has a room of his own, a way out of the cold, even if it’s temporary.

But why stop there? He can do so much _more._

He can _own_ this city, if he wants to.

Waylon remembers the gangs that roam at night like vicious animals. He can own _them,_ if he wants to.

They understand the importance of territory and blood and fear. They understand the power a man has when he kills with his bare hands. But to make them accept him _-no,_ to make them _respect_ him- he’ll have to be worse than they’ll ever be.

And something else is coming, something he feels crackling like electricity along the inside of his skull. A change is coming, and he doesn’t quite know yet what it is, but he knows he needs to be ready if he’s going to become something greater.

There's something he has to do, if he's going to finally snuff out the tiny flame of withered humanity that still flickers inside him. There’s no use for it anymore. It'll only hold him back.

So he crawls off the bed, across the room, until his hands and knees squelch in something red and steaming.

Waylon bows his head, and eats.

 

* * *

 

 It takes a very short time for him to become the apex predator of Gotham’s sewer system.

Well, _sewer system_ isn’t quite the right label for it.

It’s really much more than that. It’s sewers interlaced with subways, with tunnels half-finished and half-forgotten, flooded and bone-dry. Some well-known enough to be decorated by the city’s aspiring graffiti artists, some so completely forgotten that Waylon finds mummified corpses in clothing that must be twice his age.

It’s a labyrinth, an entire separate _world,_ stretching out like blood vessels along the underside of Gotham. He learns that they extend everywhere, even beyond the limits of the city, even under the old asylum. He spends months wandering the underground, memorizing the layout until it’s etched into his brain, tearing open sealed away tunnels and collecting the locations of dozens of hidden back doors into basements. Soon, there is nothing above that is out of his reach.

It’s the perfect territory for him to claim.

He’s known it since his feet first sloshed into the warm, murky water of the tunnel, since his eyes had widened to make sense of the complete blackness, since the heat had rushed in to caress the ragged, frostbitten edges of his scales.

For the first time in his life, Waylon knows what it means to _belong._

But he isn’t alone down here. There are people who camp in certain stretches of tunnel, or else traffick contraband goods in and throughout the city.

If he wants the sewer to be _his,_ he has to take it.

So he begins learning the names of the people who trespass in his kingdom. He starts learning who won’t be missed if they take a wrong turn in the dark.

He starts to put on weight.

And suddenly, he has a new name.

His old one fades from use more and more until Waylon has become nothing more than a ghost rattling around in his skull. It should bother him more than it does, but he’s developing a rule about thinking about these kinds of things. It’s dangerous, makes his chest grow heavy and his mind dull and leaden.

Besides, with that name comes infamy. The gangbangers who’d run wild in the streets begin to venture down in the dark, in search of Killer Croc, and when they find him, they offer him money for his strength, but never membership.

He doesn’t expect them to, but at the end of the night, when the money is in his pockets and he goes his own way, it feels just a bit like barbs digging into the soft spots between his scales.  

Fine. He doesn’t need them at all.

So he withdraws from the street gangs, and sticks to what he knows.

Croc begins guiding the dealers through the sewer tunnels, demanding a cut of their profit in return for safe passage.

After he pops the bones from their sockets, and crushes the first doubter’s skull into crumbs between his fists, they start taking him seriously.

And more people begin to drift into his underworld. Dealers, gangbangers, thieves, traffickers, all seeking a route through the sewer, all looking for an easy way to get past the cops ever since they’d started wising up to the organized crime. All looking for a way to avoid the masked man who rains bullets down on them with eerily exceptional aim, a newcomer who wants to get a feel for the do-gooder game.

He becomes rich. Rich enough to buy himself the following he could never attract on his own, to afford custom-tailored leather jackets with his own insignia, to afford his own set of lieutenants to guide the passers-through for him, to collect his sewer tax in his place.

But as with every idea once it becomes successful, the parasites arrive.

Men who’d learned his secrets, who’d started doing their own tours under the table, who’d slice off more than their cut before they hand him the money.

He twists them inside out and leaves them hanging from their innards at the entrance to each tunnel, as a warning to anyone who thinks about doing the same.

He even takes advantage of his own newfound wealth to hire the man who never misses, after he falls to the status of glorified hitman. The newest animal to join their jungle has stolen his place as overstepping vigilante. _Cut out his heart,_ he'd ordered the man when he'd phoned in the hit. _See how it feels to be one of us now._ And when a heart arrives in a gift-wrapped box, he laughs so loudly the sewers themselves shake from the sound.

He never eats them, though. He’s reached a certain level of prestige, he can’t afford to waste his time on men who are so below him. Junk food. When Croc eats human flesh, he tears it from the rich and the strong and the vicious and the beautiful. He gains power from his victims, so it may as well be power worth taking.

Once his usurpers are gone, there’s no one to contest him.

It takes a very long time, but Killer Croc finally takes the blood-soaked throne of Gotham’s criminal underworld.

Not that his peers will ever admit it. The most they’ll ever call him is King of the Sewer. The hideous, brainless beast who’d killed his way to the top, and keeps himself secluded, so he doesn’t have to stare at his own face. The monster that keeps losing to a bat and his two little birds, that keeps getting spit back and forth between Arkham and the sewers.

Be that as it may.

The fact remains that when the rest of Gotham is divided by squabbling crime lords, he’s the one with the biggest slice to call his own, the monster beneath their feet who has the underside of the city in the palm of his hand. 

 

* * *

 

But all power is temporary, and must be retaken again and again. And after years and years of being an undisputed ruler, Croc has failed to remember that.

Ten years after the Bat first flutters out of his cave with his little flock of children in funny tights in tow, he flushes Croc off his throne and out of his kingdom.

His dignity is washed out with the sewer water, and he is left with the clothes on his back and nothing more. His following has scattered beyond any hopes of rebuilding it, and his lair has been stripped bare. All the things he’d acquired in the past twenty years are gone.

 _But maybe it’s time,_ he thinks.

He’s been king for ten years, or close to it. That’s one hell of a run, longer than the mob bosses who were still ruling Gotham when he’d arrived could ever get to. It’s nothing to shake your head at, regardless of how it ended.

And his rule may be over, but he can feel deep in his bones that in the coming years, it’ll be recognized as only a signal of what’s to come.

The city has calmed over the years, hiding it’s ugliness once more, but he can tell that the monster he’d been drawn to is still alive and well. Somewhere deep in the city lies it's seething heart, still pumping it's toxic sickness out to the residents. They may not realize it yet, but they will.

A new king is coming. Not now, not so fresh after his defeat, not while the Bat and his flock are high off their success and the rest of the underworld is in a feeding frenzy, but in the future. Someone who’ll make the Bat beg for him to return, for the old days when Gotham had been ruled by the mob and he had been the only oddity in the entire city, because now there are plenty of people like him for the Bat to contend with.

In the meantime, Croc decides to find a suitable place to wait it out. So he travels south to Florida. To warm, humid nights and more water than he can dream of.

Keeping an eye on Gotham slips further and further down his list of priorities as he realizes he quite likes it.

The sewer system is far inferior to Gotham’s, and there’s no opportunity to build a kingdom here, but there’s an abundance of people for him to hunt, of the fat, rich fucks he’d loved to gorge on, of the musclebound men he’d been so eager to put in their place.

This is the power he gets, the most he’ll ever have. He should remember that.

He has no following here. No business, no name. No man or woman knows him by name, or dares to call him by it. There is no Killer Croc, there is no Waylon Jones. He slips back and forth between the two, sometimes in the space of a single thought, and no matter how hard he tries, he can never commit to one or the other.

As time goes on, and the scales begin to build on one another and whenever he looks in the mirror, he recognizes himself less and less until he stops looking at all, he accepts that he doesn’t need one.

He isn’t a man. He isn't an animal. He's something in between, something unfit for a name, some kind of monster. It would just be easier for him to start thinking like one too. Let Waylon and Croc fade together like everything else, and let them fall to the back of his mind, because as much as he wants to, he can't rid himself of either.

When he does, everything becomes simple. The days blur, one into the next, wrapped by unwinding blood and the _plink, plink, plink_ of water droplets hitting pipes.

In the blink of an eye, eight years have passed, and somehow, he's still alive.

He’s made camp in a pitch-black sewer in the heart of Tampa’s underground. Other than the shards of broken mirror and gnawed-thin bones that line his home, he avoids collecting anything else. Nothing more than a pair of cheap pants at a time, or wrapping his hands, like he’s ready to step into a boxing ring. And that’s only because the newest layer of scales covering his knuckles is still hardening, and they keep splitting.

What’s the point in gathering things? He’s just going to lose them sooner or later.

And sure enough, that day comes when three men in thick black body armor, their faces hidden behind visors of opaque glass, swoop into the narrow, damp space he’s made his own.

He rages like a wounded bear, cracking the closest man like glass between his hands.

He doesn’t stop to wonder how they’d found him, or why it is that their tranquilizers can pierce his scales.

Not until it’s too late. 


	7. you just can't stop your hurt from hanging on

Since the beginning, there’s been something very wrong with Chato Santana.

They can feel it, roiling off of him in waves when he’s angry, so hot that it leaves a hand-shaped burn on his father’s side when he punches him in a fit of rage when he’s hardly more than a toddler.

(And he's angry quite often. Since the start, the boy seems to feel everything with an incredible depth and intensity that far surpasses any of the children his age.)

They can see it, looming over his shoulder, just a step behind, like a shadow that’s far too large and far too thin to belong to a little boy, that seems to turn and regard each and every one of them with an ember-bright gaze that makes them avert their eyes as he passes by.

(And they know he sees them looking away. It doesn't stop them.)

Something old and powerful and burning, only contained by the confines of his skin. Something that makes them watch in tense silence, wondering when it is that he’ll set it free.

(And they know that day is coming, so they keep their distance, and turn him away when he comes to them.)

Something alive, something not quite it’s own being, but close. Something they say isn’t a part of him, but something that’s attached itself to him, something that he should be able to rid himself of if only he prays hard enough. 

(And when he can't, they decide that it's his own fault. Clearly, the boy wants the presence of the strange, ancient thing with him. Clearly, he is beyond saving. Clearly, there is nothing to be done.)

Something that he’s too young to be able to hold in on his own, something that only seems to expand in presence, from a faint wispy specter as a child to a looming menace as a teenager.

(And they know it's going to keep growing until it swallows him whole.)

When Chato is thirteen years old, he crawls out of his bed in the dead of night and listens to his parents’ hushed, horrified argument about what there can be done about a boy they find tracing tracks of phosphorescent blue flame in the air into strange and myriad patterns.

There are hushed whispers about a strange man in the hospital the night Chato had been born. Of death and fire and eternal damnation that is sure to come their way because of the thing sleeping down the hall from them, a strange boy-shaped creature that had crawled it's way into their lives and taken the place of their son since the beginning. Of deep and vivid dreams with chanting and war drums and crumbling pyramids and crowds bowing before a column of flame and bone.

The whispers grow louder, into vicious shouting that makes his ears ring, into the slam of a screen door and the rumbling of a car engine as his father walks out of the house and his life forever.

That night, his house burns down.

Officially, it's written off as an accident.

But everyone who is there knows otherwise when they see the vision of Death himself, illuminated in the relentless singing shine of the heart of the flames, adorned by a flickering crown of feathers and a necklace of jewel-bright eyes.

Shortly after that, they finally give a name to it.

He’s cursed. Has been since his birth.

He is a boy born without a soul. Inside of him, in it's place is a gaping hole torn by the Devil himself, through which hellfire has escaped the depths of the underworld and threatens to spew forth, damning all he touches.

The Devil’s gift, they say, destined only for evil. There is no hope for salvation, no hope for redemption for a boy who is the devil in disguise. No amount of prayer, no number of exorcisms can save him. From hell he had been born, and to hell he will return when he dies.

And still, the first time he hears the words spoken to him, something very small and certain perched at the bottom of his rib cage, ringing like the inside of a church bell, says that it isn’t quite true.

 _Not the Devil,_ it says.

But from what Chato knows of the Devil, he is a consummate liar. So he ignores the voice. He keeps going to church, despite knowing that his very presence is affront to what he’s meant to be honoring, despite knowing that nothing will be done for him.

Of course it’s the Devil, what else could it be?

His mother certainly thinks so. For years, he hears her through the wall, alternating between crying and praying every night, so he leaves home as early as he can and never looks back.

Still, he wants to reach out and tell her, _it isn’t me. It was him._

But he never does, because if she were to ask who _he_ is, he simply wouldn’t be able to answer. He’s never able to say it’s the Devil, though that’s who it must be, and saying it’s someone else feels hopelessly empty.

Because there is not a different being inside him. This he knows for certain.

It’s alive and with a mind of it’s own, but no will of it’s own. In order for it to have any power, he must join hands with it and give it purpose.

And when he does, it’s like he’s on the opposite end of a leashed wild animal, feeding on his emotions and reliant on him to give it direction. But when he does, it always goes further than he’d wanted it to.

He can’t let go, though. 

But he can’t ignore it either.

Because the implications of doing so are apocalyptic.

It’s the thought of a naive child, that if he just looks away and doesn’t listen, the fire will fade away. If he doesn't acknowledge it, the evil inside him will simply forget that he exists.

The truth is, that he can't. There is no escape from this. 

It cannot be ignored, only indulged.

_Not me, but him._

So he starts listening to the men who follow him like a pack of coyotes wherever he goes. The men who steal guns and cars and sell them to whoever will buy, who wear symbols of their affiliation inked into their skin and sewn onto their jackets, who hold their heads high and behave like kings, and yet bow before him whenever he passes.

“Come with us,” they say when he turns to speak to them, “We want you to help us.”

 _Come with us,_ they mean, _we want to use you._

He says yes all the same.

There is something burning deep inside him that needs to be fed.

He's already damned, so what else does he have to lose?

 

* * *

 

In the ash-strewn wake of the stinging pain of his first tattoos and the satisfying weight of more money than he knows what to do with lining his pockets, Chato discovers a strange sense of belonging.

These men, these boys, they want him to set the animal free. They cheer for him when he cages it once it's work is done, they look at him with thinly-veiled awe afterwards. They follow him because they’re attracted to the power, not repulsed or saddened by it. They include him in everything, and the looks they give him make him wonder if they're secretly worshiping him.

It’s a sensation he’s never felt before, that he cannot name. Chato has always been subject to powerful emotions, but they’ve always been some variation of sadness or resentment or loneliness. Never has it been something like this. Never has he felt pride blooming in his chest, never has he felt confidence draw back his shoulders and raise his head to stare down all who pass him by. Never has he felt enough strength to burn the entire earth to a cinder.

He wants more of it.

He has a purpose now, a group to call his own. Someone to protect, who will protect him in turn. Someone to feed the deep, simmering rage that had been building deep inside him all his life.

So the next time they ask him to come with them, he agrees.

And the next. And the next.

Until it’s an unspoken rule, that wherever they’re going, he will be there.

He's never initiated, but he never needs to be. They merely part at the center and raise him up to the role of leader without question.

And then there is a letterman jacket with his title emblazoned across the back. There is ink declaring his identity to the world. 

He is not ashamed any longer. He owns it. He knows who he is. He knows what he is. It's time for everyone else to know it too. 

He’s El Diablo, the devil that walks among them with a fury that must be satisfied.

It never is. The hunger inside him is always present, even when the power raging within him is unfolding and expanding, that his control is becoming more and more precise, that his following is only growing and growing.

He starts to wonder, _how far can it go?_

There’s no one to refuse him when he decides to test his limits.

Chato comes to realize that he doesn’t just want more, he wants _everything._ Why simply stop with one street, one block, one neighborhood, when the entire city is his by right, when there is no man on earth who can hope to stop him?

All he has to do is reach out and take it.

So he does.

There is little resistance from the rest of Los Angeles’s underworld. It’s like they all just see him and immediately understand. There is simply no one like him in all the world. It’s his right to take whatever he pleases without consequence.

And those who don’t accept him, who dismiss his power as nothing more than a story, soon learn otherwise.

As it turns out, no man can stand to his principles when he’s staring into the skeletal face of death. He finds it genuinely hilarious, that just for a second, they thought he was nothing more than a story. Diablo destroys them with the carelessness of a god, and never stops to wonder about the blackened husks he leaves behind.

Why should he? What are they, when compared to him?

Diablo becomes the city’s king practically overnight.

His fire is simply too great, his following feeding it when they sing his praises. His reach spreads outside of Los Angeles, outside of California, outside of the West Coast, though once Los Angeles is his, he has no intention of spreading any further.

Still, his name is known as far away as Gotham. Diablo can sense the established hive of criminals like himself (But far less powerful, he is sure) feeding his flames when they whisper his name in curiosity and camaraderie, he can feel their curious eyes turn to him in wonder. He expects it won't be long before he meets some of them, though criminals of their caliber never stray far outside of their respective territories.

Something tells him that there will come a time when it does happen. It only makes sense that someone as powerful as him would be the catalyst. 

But he has no interest in making any connections with them. Not business, not pleasure. So when he feels a slight stirring beneath his skin, and that hollow ringing in his bones sounds out the rhythm of _have you heard about El Diablo yet?_

Now that he's king, he really doesn't do much. The underworld, for the most part, runs itself. Everyone simply knows who it is to pay their respects to. Everyone's simply too afraid to stand against him. There are more than enough men who would die for the chance to run his empire for him, and honestly, there are many other things he'd rather do than sell weapons or drugs.

Diablo is resentful. It leaves the power inside him hungry and gnawing at his insides, ready to spring forth at the slightest flare of his temper. He starts formulating excuses to find nests of men to burn. 

Chato, for the most part, ignores it. He’s controlled it before, he can do it again. He doesn't want to think about the implications of swallowing the monster and hoping it doesn’t claw it’s way back up.

He’s been left with a considerable amount of freedom, enough freedom to indulge in a desire he’d cultivated in the most secret part of his heart.

There is a woman named Grace who works in one of the clubs he frequents, who captures his attention and holds it when she dances.

A woman who knows who he is, who’s seen what he is, and can still hold his gaze without flinching.

A woman who can draw Chato apart from from Diablo with ease, and bind him to her with sharp, sardonic words and a rich, warm laugh and a touch like sunbeams that slips into the skin of his chest and envelops his heart in soft light.

A woman who makes him wonder, what would happen if he left it all behind?

But he can’t, because this is all he knows. This is the only way he can provide for himself, for her, for _them._

And he likes it far too much. Without it, there’s a significant piece of himself that is missing. There is no outlet for the rage, which will only build and build until it consumes everything.

Without it, he has no power. Without it, he isn't a man. 

Still, he wants it. He wants something good and pure and kind _now,_ because he certainly won't get it when he dies. 

Besides, Chato can have anything he wants. If anyone is capable of living with a foot in two worlds at the same time, it must be him. If anyone deserves to, it's him.

So he makes for himself a place where he can cast aside the letterman jacket and play at domesticity, away from the violence, away from the rage and the flames. A warm house with a cactus garden and a butter-yellow kitchen, always loud with playful argument. A wife with the brightest smile in the world wearing his name like a necklace. A family, all his own, one he’ll never leave.

He will not be his father, he decides early on. No matter what happens, he'll stay. 

Grace is simply wrong when she tells him that it's impossible, that someday, one world will shift, roll out of his reach and collide with the other. He will lose his footing, and fall into one or the other.

In his arrogance, he doesn't understand until it's too late.

 

* * *

 

When he does, the sensation isn’t of falling, as Grace had always thought it would be.

It’s freezing.

Everything inside him has shuddered to a crashing halt.

The rage is gone. The power is gone. _They_ are gone. And it's all because of him.

There is nothing left but a mantra, repeated in his head again and again until it resembles the pounding of a war drum, etching itself onto the inside of his skull.

_What have you done? What have you done? What have you done? What have you done?_

To which, he tries to respond, _It was him, it was him, it was him, it was him._

But he knows it’s all bullshit.

There is no difference, is there? It's a mask he hides behind because he isn't strong enough to own the monstrosity of his actions.

The flames part for him like the golden curtains of a stage as he steps out of the smoldering husk that had once been his house. He's played out the last act of what he should have realized has been a tragedy all along. 

He raises his arms in surrender to the dozens of police cars already parked outside, and flinches.

Not an hour ago, he’d done the same, and they’d been enveloped in sleeves of fire.

Not an hour ago, he’d held his heart in his arms, only to watch it crumble into ashes and scatter.

Not an hour ago, he'd realized that he isn't responsible for one death, but three.

 _Shoot me,_ Chato wants to scream at the dozens of policemen gathered outside his house, _Go on, shoot me, I deserve it! Send me back to hell!_

But he can’t. His voice has collapsed on itself and his throat feels like it's lined with sandpaper. He’d been screaming for a long time. Not all of it had been in anguish.

When powerful arms snatch him and his body is slammed into a car hood, so hard that he can feel something in his rib cage pop, it feels distant, like all of his ability to feel has shrunk to a single point deep inside his body, and he’s only experiencing a vague echo of what is happening to him.

His eyes sting and his vision blurs, but it isn’t because of the smoke.

 

* * *

 

He must be a truly evil man, Chato decides.

Good men don’t do the things he’s done. They don't kill for the sake of satisfying some sick, primal urge.

But he has, and now he’s in prison for the rest of what he’s sincerely hoping will be a very short life, because if it isn't, he knows he'll only cause more harm.

Good men don’t set the fluttering pages of their prison-issued bibles ablaze in desperate frustration.

But he has, because he gets the sense that God has never been watching over him, and he can't yet shake his carefully cultivated loathing.

Good men don’t find themselves in the situation he’s in, caught in the center of a cesspool of swelling aggression, of dozens of men with handmade weapons concealed in their sleeves. Men who he’d wronged at some point in his tyrannical reign, who have wanted him dead for a very long time and are finally in a position to act on it. Men who could care less about what will happen to them, so long as they kill the monster before he kills them.

But he is, and he’s snarling at them, "Do it! Come on, _do it!"_

Because he knows, that if he doesn't die here and now, if someone or something doesn't snuff out the flame, he will keep slipping deeper into darkness. He'll burn his way through the prison and back onto the streets. He'll sear his way through all he encounters, because there is no one to stop him long enough to contain himself.

Good men, after all that’s been done to them, don’t let the rage back in.

But the fury in him, bright and consuming, has returned.

 _He_ is back. And there’s nothing Chato can do about it. His loss of sensation hadn’t been anything more than temporary.

After everything he's done, he still hasn't learned. He still feels his blood rising to meet the anger, still finds himself eagerly anticipating what is about to happen, still finds himself unable to stop.

His anger is packed like dynamite, and every movement seems to send sparks flying.

When the first knife digs into his shoulder, Chato’s muscle memory takes over.

He must be an evil man, he decides, because when he loses control, there's a smile on his face.

 

* * *

 

Chato awakens to the soft tapping of rain on metal, drumming out a rhythm like a tiny machine gun.

He glances around and finds himself in utter lightlessness.

 _Am I dead?_ he wonders, _Is this hell?_

Maybe, somehow. his power had drained him dry, or a guard had shot him from the watchtower, or some inmate he hadn't seen had managed to slit his throat when he'd been basking in his victory...

No.

The air is musty and stale, and a damp metal grate is digging a gridlike pattern into his bare back. The dead can't feel discomfort.

He's alive, then, he decides as he shifts into a seated position. But he isn't in his cell.

Chato frowns.

There's a patch of darkness ahead of him that is slightly more blue-tinted than the rest. A tiny comma of white light appears, and then continues to flicker in every few seconds.

Chato crawls towards it, and blinks as his hands brush against a solid metal wall.

He realizes he's staring through a tiny, porthole-shaped window.

Through the rain-streaked glass, he can see a bleak, gray prison yard, fenced in by high, barbed chain-link and patrolled by distant dark shapes.

In the distance, a wall with a watchtower, sending a beacon of light streaming across the yard in continuous circles, streaks of white light scribbling across the wide, shallow puddles in the gutter.

He's in a prison, but it isn't the one he remembers.

Chato frowns, and begins feeling out the dimensions of his tube, but there's only so much he can do in the dark.

 _Just this once,_ he promises himself as he opens a ball of golden flame in his hands.

Immediately, it begins to grow, hungrily consuming all the air in the small space.

But there isn't any time to examine it, as a freezing blast of ice-cold water rains down on him, flattening him against the rounded wall and kneading the breath from his lungs.

Chato is spat from wall to wall of the enclosure like he's caught in a riptide, and he flails frantically, swallowing lungfuls of water until his chest feels like it's about to pop.

As quickly as the water comes, it drains away through a collection of pipes beneath the grate, and Chato is left shivering, sputtering, clinging to the metal with clammy fingers as the water steams off his body. The fire in him has been extinguished to a handful of shaking embers.

When he realizes what this means, his gasps are no longer of pain, but of relief.


	8. the laws they'd set aside

It's quiet tonight.

The only sound this late is the whispering of his shoes over the street as he passes under shifting pools of lamplight.

Christopher Weiss reaches a hand into his pocket, and runs his thumb over the worn grooves of his apartment key, before resting it on the thumb drive containing the only remaining copy of his formula. His raw knuckles sting when they brush up against the fabric, but the pain is strangely satisfying.

He could turn around, he knows.

He could walk back inside. Start sweeping up the pieces of the demolished server room. Start mopping the chemicals off the floor. Wait for his supervisor, with the grin that glints like the flash of a photographer’s camera, to arrive. Explain himself and wait for the punishment, because there are only three things that Christopher knows for a fact about himself, the first being that the only time anyone ever really sees him is when he’s made a mistake. 

But he won’t, because the thing is, he isn’t ashamed. He doesn’t regret this at all.

Besides, this is something that he’s been entertaining in his souring thoughts for a very long time, an urge that had been throbbing deep within his chest, growing stronger every year.

This is something he’s wanted to do ever since he’d sat down months ago and watched the path of his life stretch out before him, mundane and empty, free of respect or recognition, and he’d decided that he simply wouldn’t follow it. He'd sacrificed too much to get to where he is, and for what? A mind-numbing, thankless job where the hours drag on like horses with broken legs. Not nearly as much pay as he wants. Life in a city where no one knows his name or cares enough to learn it. 

This is something he's been preparing for. The reason why he spends most of his free time outside of the lab running or lifting weights or free climbing, pushing his body to the point of collapse, and then beyond. Because back when the answer to the question of whether he was going to go through with this was still uncertain, he had known that he needed to be strong. 

This is something that makes him feel more alive than he has in years, because finally, he has nothing to hold him back. Nothing to stop him from doing whatever the hell he wants, whenever he wants it. No one to refuse him or to give him pause before he takes what he wants. No one to tell him what to do anymore.

This is the moment they’ll all look back to, years from now, when they ask themselves, _how didn’t we see this coming?_

They should have. They _really_ should have.

There are three things that Christopher knows for a fact about himself, and the second of them is that he’s always, without fail, the smartest man in the room.

They’d forgotten that the second they’d hired him. They’d stuck him in a position with decent pay but no chance for upward mobility, let alone access to the more interesting projects, and promptly forgotten he’d existed.

And there had been a time when Christopher had genuinely believed that, if he could go back in time, he would in a second. He’d find the smartest boy in White Earth and tell him, “Listen, it isn’t worth it.”

_It isn’t worth traveling from one end of the country to another to work for Leaston Howard, because the thing is, they don't give a shit about you. You should have known that the second they told you to cut your hair for the job._

_It isn’t worth cutting ties with everyone and everything you’d left behind so completely that when you call them, they refuse to answer. Because the thing is, you have no one now, and it really should bother you that you don't._

_It isn’t worth working long hours into the night, until your eyelids feel like they’re eroding under the harsh glare of the lab’s fluorescent lights. Because the thing is, you don't even have a reason to do it. It's just to keep your mind occupied so you don't think too much about how monotonous everything is._

_It isn’t worth living in a peeling, sagging apartment with a few scraps of marred furniture well below your pay grade. Because the thing is, you want more. You deserve more. Why stop here, when you can have everything?_

_It isn’t worth burying most of your salary into funding your own research. Because the thing is, when you finally complete it, they’ll probably fire you for keeping it a secret (But your work has never been appreciated, so it's only natural that you don't want to share it)_ _. And if they don’t, they’ll take it for themselves. Either way, that money isn't going to you._

But that’s impossible. He's just a man, with no special power. Time slips out of reach, and there's nothing to be done about the past, no matter how brightly it glows as it slips further from reach.

Because he's here now, with a grungy, spontaneous feeling sticking to the inside of his ribs, he doesn’t even want to, because that would make all these years useless, and he can't bear the thought of making all of it meaningless.

The third thing that Christopher knows for a fact about himself is that he always, without fail, turns his pain into determination, and keeps on moving. Ever since he's a boy, he's done this. He takes the exhaustion and the anger and the restlessness and the disillusionment, and channels it into hard, ferocious work. It's what had carried him through poverty, driven him to the top of his class, won him his scholarship and sent him down to Montgomery for the job he's just quit. It's what's going to guide him down the path he's been thinking about for months. 

He rolls the thumb drive between his fingers, and nods to himself as he thinks about the contents.

A formula that, when correctly applied, can give ordinary rope the durability of steel. He's tested it himself, and knows for a fact that it's perfect. It just needs to be put to use.

If a man isn't appreciated, he can settle for being feared instead. If a man isn't taken seriously, they won't see him coming.

They'll forget about him quickly, but maybe that's a good thing. If a man is forgettable, he can get away with a lot.

He's smarter than all of them, and he knows exactly how to use the formula in his fingers.

And the more obstacles in his way, the deeper the satisfaction will be when he surpasses them.

All three of those things, when he combines them, will make him unstoppable.

 

* * *

 

In crime, Christopher discovers a sense of profound release.

There's never a boring minute, because there's always a new problem to be unraveled, a new adventure to be had, a new dimension to be discovered in the dark, addictive thrill that courses through this life. 

Even when his muscles scream as he tears past his own limits scaling buildings, when his chest trembles with soft wheezing as he hangs from a ceiling, when the pain cuts like a switchblade through his skin, he continues with his lips quirked up into a smile.

That's the point: high risk, high reward. He wouldn't have it any other way.

All the things that had been denied to him as a child are now within reach. If he wants something, he can take it, or buy it with money that he can easily acquire. He can have a penthouse and a handsome car and an Armani suit in a second if he so desires it. He can buy the respect he was never given, and spend as recklessly as he pleases.

He answers to no one but himself, even when he begins working on commission, because he's careful in his negotiations. He plans the jobs on his own, executes them on his own, and reaps the benefits on his own, selling his spoils or else exchanging them with his employer for a fee that he carefully adds another zero to with every repeat job (and they keep coming back, because he's the best freelance thief in Montgomery, or even the entire South).

He never involves any hackers, henchmen, fall guys, or other lackeys, because, in part, half the fun is doing the whole job on his own. There's also the simple truth that he'd simply rather keep all the money for himself.

There's also the fact that he's regarded as a bit of a laughingstock by the rest of the underworld. He's the man with the dark suit and the braided hair and the fancy ropes, whose trademark skill is climbing. The criminal name that gets leaked into the papers is a joke.

He prefers to let them laugh, because he could really care less. If they don't take him seriously, that's their problem, because underestimating him is a dangerous mistake. If his name is easily confused with a heavy metal band, that only helps him evade the police. The only people who matter are prospective clients and buyers, and finding him is never a concern to them. His work speaks for itself.

And besides, something's telling him that more people like him, people who possess an unparalleled mastery in a specific skill and put it to use in their criminal careers, are coming. He's just one of the first. If they don't recognize it, that's their problem, because after a matter of months, he's the most sought-after man in the city, while they're all still trying to scrape by from job to job.

Christopher gets so good at it that after no more than a handful of years, he begins to get the sense that either Montgomery has become too small a place for him to hunt, or else he has simply grown too big. Someone like him, someone as talented, as recognizable, deserves to be somewhere better.

Towards the beginning, he thinks quite often about moving to Gotham, with it's skyscrapers rising like tombstones and it's enclave of centuries-old wealthy families to burgle. More importantly, it's a place where a crocodile man can rule for a decade, where a hitman doesn't have to trade his costume for respect, where it's most noteworthy thief is a woman with cat ears sewn to her suit.

But he never settles there. Yes, Gotham has people like him, but that means competition. After he comes face-to-face with some of them in the city's infamous nuthouse, he decides he's better off somewhere else. There are other cities that aren't already crawling with career criminals that have valuables worth taking.

He never ends up choosing a single city as his base of operations. A man with clients like him often has to travel, because many of his marks are in different locations. And besides, he likes it. He looks forward to moving from city to city, country to country, staying a few nights or a few weeks before taking off again. He's seeing more of the world than he'd ever thought he would have. 

However, it would be a lie to say that he doesn't have his preferences.

Keystone City is, without a doubt, his favorite, to the point where he's arranged for a penthouse to be prepared at all times for his arrival. The city isn't the largest, nor the most impressive, nor does it have the most interesting set of prospective targets, but it had been the place where he'd really gotten his start, the singular point from which his name had begun to spread across the country, the place where he had killed his first man. The small, underfed part of him that still holds on to sentimentality remembers his earliest days with pride, and their backdrop had been Keystone. For that, he'll always look at the city with no small amount of fondness.

Midway becomes a close second, if only because the architecture of the buildings lend themselves to climbing spectacularly well, but he comes to realize that it's a place that simply must be avoided whenever possible once the city's grid of cameras are installed. 

Though he avoids Gotham when he can, sometimes it simply can't be helped. The city is ancient and proud and very, very wealthy, despite the wild creatures that roam it's streets, and anybody who's anybody in the criminal world passes through Gotham at some point. 

He keeps his visits to Central City brief, mostly to avoid the shaggy Australian who shares his taste in strange weaponry. The odd sense of camaraderie that had bound the two together had only lasted as long as it had taken them to break out of prison the first and only time Christopher had been arrested. If he ever sees the man again, it'll be too soon.

But Los Angeles is the only place in the world he's blacklisted, because the last thing he wants is to run into the devil man. His ropes are fireproof, but he isn't.

Once his alias is blown, when his face becomes synonymous with the name 'Slipknot,' he has to change his tactics to an extent. 

Christopher, not at all willing to face prison again, becomes careful to diversify the locations of his jobs. He has his preferences, yes, but he knows that it's dangerous to choose marks in the same city. If someone were to place each of his burglaries on a map and see them clustered around a single point, long after he'd amassed the infamy and wealth to hunt anywhere he'd wanted, they could easily find him. It's the undoing of many career criminals who don't publicly declare their territory, and he has no intention of joining them.

He never does, though. His caution is rewarded when he escapes arrest again and again. His name continues to spread, and bit by bit, he gains the dignity that had been denied him in the beginning as more and more criminals like the Australian begin to surface, gaudy and bombastic, with more of a flair for entertainment than efficiency. The old crime families who don't quite see the appeal prefer a man who can practice some subtlety, such as himself. The work improves, and his reputation is cemented. It would take one hell of a change to rattle it.

 

* * *

  

In hindsight, he should have seen it coming long before the word 'Superman' became ubiquitous with a red-and-blue streak and a crumbling city.

Something had been shifting in the fabric of the underworld for quite a long time.

Before, it had been quite easy to ignore, so, like the rest of the world, Christopher had turned a blind eye to it.

The menagerie of deformed and deranged that has infested Gotham for at least three decades had simply been another facet in the city's identity, like the snarling gargoyles or the grayish, hazy film of smog that chokes the sky. No one bats an eye at the idea of a woman who can kill with a kiss haunting the park, or it's newest crime lord dressing and behaving like a strange mix between a punk rocker and a circus clown, or the city's police force enlisting the help of a man dressed like a bat in containing them and many more. 

"That's just Gotham for you," everyone always says with a shrug.

When a man with the face of the Devil himself had burned a path through Los Angeles, there had been tremors in the underworld for months. But then he showed no interest in leaving his territory, so they stopped thinking too hard about it. It was dismissed as a one-off situation, in all likelihood because it would have disturbed them too much to admit otherwise. Those who could afford to avoid it changed their routes to avoid the city, and those who couldn't bowed before it's king. In a very short amount of time, the status quo had been restored, and life had carried on.

It's only after Metropolis has been reduced to a city of dust that they force themselves to start taking notice. Because now, it's an irrevocable fact that aliens are real.

In response, an entire black market industry springs sprung up around Kryptonite. Christopher spends a solid month working to obtain pieces of it for a private company that plans to turn it into a weapon.

But as the Superman debates rage on, and there are whispers of people who live deep below the sea, and word of a red streak that snatches criminals off their feet and drops them neatly gift-wrapped in front of police stations (A rumor that rings a bell in the back of Christopher's mind, one that he doesn't want to think about, because it means admitting that the Australian was right about something), the cocky adaptability of the underworld begins to sour.

Suddenly, there's a new word for the coming change, and none of them can deny that it's happening, that whatever strange virus had infected Gotham centuries before has begun leaking out to infect the rest of the world, and that it's only going to continue to do so. Sightings begin to sprout up like weeds all across the world, and the underworld tears itself in two as it struggles to react. 

For every man who sees an opportunity to hire an unkillable assassin or an invisible thief, there's a man who sees a person in a mask there to interrupt or usurp his business.

'Metahuman' becomes a household term, a word that leaves a bitter taste in Christopher's mouth as he falls further and further from demand.

Metahuman. _Noun._  A blanket term meant to encompass all human-like beings with strange powers and abilities. Aliens. Magic. Technology. Mutants. All of it, and more that has yet to appear.

(Metahuman. _Noun._  A person with more power than you'll ever hope to have, who's going to either fuck up your work, or steal it from you. He doesn't know yet which is worse.)

It becomes a very good time to take up assassination work, and Christopher is nothing if not an opportunist.

Bodies begin to hang from streetlamps in the early hours before dawn, some with their necks broken from the force, others still kicking, but too far gone to be saved in time.

There are preventative measures that can be taken against knives or bullets or poison. Rope is different because no one expects it, which is a shame in Christopher's opinion, because judging from the reactions he gets, it's definitely the most painful way to go. There's something poetic about hanging that appeals him to people who really want to make a statement with their hits.

Despite his reputation, it still takes months before he finally learns that someone has begun putting a price on the heads of metahumans. 

By the time Christopher becomes involved, it has evolved into a twisted sort of game. A way for all the hitmen and assassins to play against one another, to see who's truly the best now that the order of the world has been shaken, to see if the men who'd held their places at the top before still have what it takes. To remind the people with powers that they're nothing more than a blip on the radar, soon to be gone and forgotten.

The thought of it energizes him like nothing else, and when he's tapped for a hit, he fulfills it flawlessly.

It isn't long before he's chosen again, and then once more. Of all the men taking part, he's the only one who has yet to let the metahuman defeat him, escape, or get caught by the police before he succeeds in killing them. 

When he sees the number of zeroes attached to the head of his fourth target, he throws himself in with reckless abandon, never stopping to wonder at the coincidence of his mark being dangerously close to the warehouse where he'd first discovered his formula.

He isn't caught when he arrives, but when the face of the man he's been sent to kill is beginning to turn blue, and his eyes begin to roll back in his head, when he's too preoccupied with his kill to turn and properly meet the sea of policemen in armored suits who swarm him, knocking the breath from his lungs, and the gun from his hands.

He must have hit his head when he was knocked to the ground, he thinks, because there's a dark-skinned woman standing like an island in the midst of a seething sea of navy-clad policemen. When she catches him staring, she merely smiles, but the hunger in her eyes sends a chill down his spine.


	9. either way, he wanted her, and this was bad

Gotham City had once been a hideous place to live, or so some of Monster T’s closest men say when they gather around a bar after a job well done.

In the eighties, it had been the site of a gathering storm, as mob bosses from the old school of Gotham’s criminals, back when people feared family names instead of clown costumes or scarecrows, and clashed over the opportunities opened by the deaths of the heads of Gotham’s first family. If you had the money to move out, you did. Simple as that.

In the nineties, despite the best efforts of the newly-arrived Bat, it had been hell on earth. Monster T hadn’t yet moved here, but he’s seen the videos of dirt-smudged people smoking in soot-streaked balconies of half-burned apartment buildings. He’s seen the famous photograph series of the pack of homeless teenagers roaming the streets (His favorite is the one of them gathered in the basement of a condemned house no one had lived in since the sixties, crowded around a black-and-white television set watching Grace Kelly and Cary Grant kiss).

If you lived in Gotham in the nineties, you had to be strong, because Gotham was the wretched hive that no one had gotten around to exterminating. You couldn’t get out, so you got hard. You grew armor under your skin, you kept your head down, you severed all the ties that might weaken you, and you dug your claws in deep to rise up high.

And then?

And _then,_ something fundamental in the skeleton of the city had changed. Sometime around ten years ago, the Bat had become effective. He’d proven that he wasn’t as corruptible as the man who doesn’t miss. The people he protected started to realize that just _maybe,_ they could get out alive. The people he fought started to realize that they’d been missing a certain balance, a predator to thin the herd, and they adapted accordingly, even eagerly.

Around the same time, Wayne had started flooding Gotham with charity projects, resurrecting the screaming, dying, rotting city and making it livable again. The people started to remember that this had once been a beautiful place, and that it was worth restoration.

Of course, that was also when a certain clown had appeared, but no one wants to think too long about that.

Too controversial, to think that the most infamous killer in the city’s history, by finally forcing the public to understand that the oddities running their underworld are here to stay, may have contributed to the return of the city’s lost glamour.

(It’s one hell of a _joke,_ he realized years ago, but he’ll never voice it)

It’s been close to twenty years since the Bat’s debut, nearly ten since the Joker’s, and people are starting to live here on purpose again. They cross the country deliberately, moving into the neighborhoods ringed by rivers, flushing the poor like rats into the heart of the city to be forgotten about and fed to the ever-waiting, always-hungry jaws of Gotham’s new and vicious class of criminal (All things in balance, right?).

It would be a lie to say that Monster T isn’t one of them.

He isn’t a native. He was born and raised in Coast City, and the years he’s lived and worked in Gotham number fewer than the fingers on his hand. Compared to men he works side by side with, he’s a newcomer.

And it had been the lure of the Joker that had brought him here. 

There are two ways to work with him, and anyone who plans to had better figure out exactly which way they're going, and throw themselves into it.

One: the short term. Get in, do the job, get the money, get out. Do it well enough and you'll escape unscathed. Do it poorly and at least your death will be quick and quiet, and no one will miss you.

The other: the long haul. Come in, do the job, then another and another still. Climb the ladder as fast as you can. Escape the expendable, and find yourself in a completely different world. Go to places in Gotham only a handful of people know exist. Find yourself surrounded by more wealth than you know what to do with. Rub elbows with living legends. Hope that you don't fuck up, because if you do, your death will be drawn-out and excruciating, and everyone will remember it. 

Monster T had arrived in Gotham with aspirations, so when he'd finally made it into the Joker's circle, he'd opted to travel down the latter path. He'd excelled, but the trick to keep doing so is to keep moving. Keep reaching higher and higher still.

And he's starting to think that maybe there's something even more in store for him.

It’s taken the Joker eight years to snag the title of King, and even then, he was only doing half the work (In T’s mind, that carnival sideshow of a relationship had been the first sign that Joker was on his way out).

It’s taken Monster T two to become the clown’s top business partner, and the man everyone in Gotham goes to for firearms. Despite never meeting face to face with the Joker or his girl, he’s made himself nearly irreplaceable.

It might take less for him to rise even higher.

Monster T excels in the gray space between old and new. He’s sane enough to gain the respect of the distinguished crime families, but just wild enough to fit in well enough with the rogues. And Gotham’s underworld can run itself like a zoo for all he cares, but it’s kingpin should never be a rabid hyena.

And he gets the sense that Joker’s rule over Gotham isn’t going to last.

He’s had control for just over a year, and already, he’s slipping.

But the Joker still has an incredible amount of power-enough to be able to literally walk out of Arkham a free man, like he did a week ago.

Still, he was in there for several weeks. He's out of the loop. He needs to find his feet again, to reassert himself, to get a sense of what's changed in his absence.

That’s why Monster T had discovered a playing card pinned to the wall above his bed with a butterfly knife just hours ago, with words scribbled in a script that reminds him of dead spiders summoning him to the Joker’s latest playpen. The clown is uncertain enough to want to meet with his favorite men in person, when he’d never felt the need to do so before.

That’s why, despite his many payphone-centric calls to rival drug lords and weapons dealers, and his slow-but-steady preparation for a power vacuum, the chance that he'll make it out unscathed is a solid fifty-fifty, which is a chance that's better than many of his odds had been before.

That’s why he’s here, at the latest gaudy centerpiece of the Joker’s ever-changing operations, answering an invitation that he’s obligated to accept. Because if he doesn't, it's a declaration of war.

It had first been the Grin and Bare it, nestled in the heart of the Narrows. It’s time had come and gone long before T had taken up residence in the neighborhood, but the hushed stories of a man being skinned alive and forced to dance on stage until his entrails had fallen loose still echo in his ears whenever he passes it by. It had been those stories that had guided him into the Joker’s ranks.

It had been the Stacked Deck by the waterfront, before it had gone up in flames.

It had been the Funhouse, by Amusement Mile, before the Bat had found it.

It was the Royal Flush in Uptown, before the police raid.

And for a few brief weeks, during which the Joker had been strangely absent from both Arkham and Gotham itself, the Harlequinade in the Diamond District had been the place to be. Before it exploded.

Now, Monster T stands before the Joker’s latest and greatest den of vice, standing tall and proud in the heart of the city’s downtown, it’s name hanging in blinking electric-blue neon script above the entrance: The Wild Card.

It’ll be somewhere else soon, he knows (It’ll be _his_ soon), because the Joker doesn’t have what it takes to settle somewhere permanently. Especially not with his preference for locations that are vaguely related to his punk rock clown gimmick.

Really, it’s a miracle that the cops haven’t raided it yet.

 _Maybe tonight,_ he thinks.

 _Maybe tonight,_ he hopes, as he unlocks his phone and makes a decision that'll likely come back to bite him soon.

(But _just in case...)_

To T’s annoyance, no one seems the slightest bit intimidated that this is the Joker’s club.

If anything, the crowds have doubled since the secret had bled it’s way through the city’s nightlife. Lines that run the length of city blocks have long given way to a pushing, vicious mass of people of all shapes and sizes, each wearing an outfit slightly more outrageous and expensive than the person before them.

Maybe that’s more support for T’s theory, that he’s weakening. Now everyone wants to get close to him.

Or maybe it’s just the effect the Joker has, as one of the three most influential men in the city. T considers them to be the closest thing Gotham has to a Holy Trinity.

The Bat gives the city hope.

Wayne gives it money.

The Joker gives it mystique.

Is it any wonder that he has such a following, why so many people are drawn to him? Why so many people ignore their better instincts and reach closer and closer still?

Monster T grimaces as he forces them to part for him, and smoothly dodges a glimmering heel that flies off the club’s roof, where a flock of sequin-studded women are hanging over the banister like exotic birds in faux fur coats dyed in ostentatious shades of pink and orange. The unusually intense mid-October chill doesn’t seem to bother them in the slightest as they wave gleefully down at the waiting masses, stray snowflakes clinging to strands of shining hair.

The people at the front of the crowd eagerly press themselves with manic enthusiasm against a wall of bouncers in sleek purple velvet suits who judge them for entry with stony faces.

The Joker keeps a certain circle of people within his orbit. Money overflowing from the pockets. Reputation for him to grow his web of influence. A mix of old blood and new. Beauty. Desperation. Wildness. Fame. Eccentricity.  He likes to surround himself with people as bright and vicious and rich and strange as he is, and watch them interact. And then, when he finds someone to his liking, they gain the opportunity to ascend higher still and prove him right or wrong (and they all accept, because who the hell are they kidding?).

When T whips out the Joker card and raises it above the crowd, he is guided into a tightening line of chosen partiers who’ve been granted entry and feeds himself into the gilded jaws of the club, slapping a handful of bills into the doorman's hand as he passes.

He’s been here many times before, for both business and pleasure, but the feeling is always the same.

The entrance hall always seems to stretch longer and longer as they walk through it, like they're climbing down the throat of an ancient beast. It's lined with colors so bright, they seem to be screaming at him, and burn their impressions on the insides of his eyelids.

The air, trembling with bass, seems to be drugged with manic excitement, with promises of endless riches and electric fun and ecstatic indulgence.

The idea sparks in the back of his skull, as he’s sure it’s doing in the heads of every one of the people he’s following: Suddenly, everything is possible, and the city’s too-long, too-strange nights are filled with possibility. Nothing will go wrong. They can go anywhere. They can do anything. They’ve _arrived._

The crowd begins to divide sharply into thirds, each group rushing off through a separate hall, to a room that they’re all certain is made to cater to them and their most secret desires.

A group of businessmen in sleek thousand-dollar suits surge like a herd of wild bulls towards the singing of slot machines to his left. Young, newly arrived with the latest wave of gentrifiers, ready to inject untainted money into Gotham’s veins. Ready to mingle with the old and established who make every transaction with bloodstained fingers, who secretly pine for the days when the city’s kingpin was nothing more than a savvy businessman, who made his transactions with a sound mind and a mere indifference to violence.

Men who pour millions into their bank accounts every day, about to gamble away everything on a _feeling._ And when they do, when they’re invited upstairs and go with their tails between their legs, _he’ll_ be waiting with a gracious tin grin to enable their habits.

Months from now, when their pockets are threadbare and their reputations are in ruins, they’ll receive an invitation to return. A chance to win back their wealth and their standing (so of course they accept). But when they arrive, they’ll simply vanish behind one of the hidden doors worked into the architecture of the walls, and go missing for months on end. When and how they're found varies.

A string of girls moving hand-in-hand like a chain of sparkling paper dolls, make a mad dash up a staircase to his right, at the top of which the musical clinking of liquor bottles can be heard.

To Monster T, they seem a few years too young for the tiny, glossy dresses and elaborate coats they’d been struggling to model outside, and from the scraps of conversation he can pick up, they’ve only stolen their way in because the one in turquoise, with hair that shines in glossy black waves and eyelashes flashing rainbow-colored glitter, had successfully convinced a bouncer that she _knows a guy._

He won’t be the one to turn them in. He respects a good lie. The first time he'd come here, he'd done the same.

But if they get caught, the outcome is completely dependent on the boss’s mood.

She could be leaning over the balcony, waving her champagne flute at the pressing crowd below, and suddenly lose her grip (Cleaner, that way. Then the mess will be on the city to clean up, and it can be passed off as a suicide or simple accident. The overworked, underpaid police department has far more pressing matters to concern themselves with than a glitzy teenager splattering on the street. If she had to bullshit her way in, she's not important enough to investigate).

But then again, she might just be allowed to return for having the confidence to lie, and the skill to get away with it. There are many who linger in the gilded second floor who’ve done just that, and she could join them. She might make enough of an impression for an initiation, if she plays her cards just so. T certainly did.

With a boss like the Joker, you never really _know_ for certain, which is why, despite his own plans, Monster T isn’t particularly pessimistic about their meeting. He might find it funny, if he even knows it’s happening at all (No, he definitely knows. No doubt about it).

The third cluster, spills out and down the black, glossy steps, into the sea of humanity on the dance floor.

Some clubs are exclusive about the demographics of their clientele, preferring old blood or new. Men or women. Gay or straight. Black or white. Punks or yuppies. Hustlers, pimps and gangsters who’d made the city theirs for decades, who use the space to further business deals. Trust fund babies who’ve only just arrived because Gotham is now a socially acceptable place to party, who are only looking for a bit of harmless fun.

Not so, with Joker’s, where on any given night, you can find anyone thrashing in the tide of sound.

T doesn’t mistake this for generosity, because it isn't. It’s just another strategic move on the Joker’s part, ensuring that Gotham’s masses never completely separate, that his sphere of influence is as great as possible, that the business that happens around poker tables and in the dark crevices in the corner of the dance floor are never out of earshot. Just another way of stirring up the Joker’s personal brand of chaos. That’s also why his latest club is an amalgamation of casino, dance floor, lounge and bar- covering all his bases to lure in as wide a herd of cattle as possible. He plasters his name over every surface to feed his ego and to help the partiers remember where they are.

If they think for a second that they’ve somehow foxed their way into his world, they’re mistaken. Still, he knows for a fact that they’re all peeking through drugged and drunken eyes for a glimpse of the two most infamous inhabitants.

Monster T can instantly separate the newcomers from the repeat patrons by where their eyeline drifts, because only people who have been here long enough can bear to look up at the ceiling, domed like a planetarium and distorted by trapezoids of violet- and lemon-colored light that dance in kaleidoscopic patterns so sharp, they make him think of sunlight reflected off a razor blade.

He always expects to get used to the intensity of the lighting, but he never does. T digs in his pockets, and quickly slides his sunglasses onto his nose.

Then, he cranes his neck again, and with a carefully trained eye, he finds the golden balcony ringing the far end of the ceiling, an interruption in a veil of gilded beads that stretches the length of the rest of the dome, and down into the dance floor, sending fractals of sharp light into the eyes of anyone who tries to look too long without knowing exactly where. Something that serves function just as much as it does aesthetic, because it's next to impossible to shoot your mark when you can't see where you're aiming.

Everyone knows about the roof, but not many people realize the second floor to the club is in use.

He’s been there many times himself, and knows that it’s where only the best of the best go. The repeat visitors whose longtime loyalty is finally being rewarded, the criminals looking to close deals, the truly influential who are rich or ruthless enough to be deemed worthy of a higher level of secrecy, worthy enough to brush shoulders with royalty.

It takes another moment for Monster T to locate them, behind one specific spot in the beaded curtain, where the ceiling platforms down just a bit lower than the rest of the second floor.

The VIP lounges, uncharted territory for him, but not for much longer. Where the Joker watches patiently and waits for an opening, like a bird of prey.

There’s a shape, paler than the shadows behind the curtain, that shifts and reforms itself as Monster T recognizes what it must be.

Two people, closely intertwined, one marked by a streak of electric green, the other glittering and golden.

The Joker, with a woman on his lap, their laughter drowned out by the pulse of the music.

 _That’ll be him up there, soon,_ he'd once thought.

Now, he isn't so sure.

Now, the idea of it leaves the taste of ash in his mouth.

The sudden pressure of fingers on his shoulders has T reaching for his gun purely out of reflex, but he immediately recognizes the grip.

Jonny Frost is a towering man with a steady hand, a neat suit, and a spectacular poker face. The Joker’s shadow, all the way back since the beginning. The man who'd made T realize that there was a chance to become irreplaceable to him. The man who, in a vague and slightly cosmic sense, is responsible for T's current situation.

He’s also a man of few words, so it’s with a nod of his head and no more than, “Let’s go, the boss wants you,” that he leads T across the dance floor.

Their walk to a door that blends in perfectly with the shadows of the club, it’s existence only known to T because of his status as a repeat patron, is interrupted when a woman bursts out of the door. She lands like a sack of rocks in the middle of T’s chest, snatching the end of his jacket as she struggles to balance on her stilettos.

He grunts angrily, and hurriedly shoves her off him (Oh, he does _not_ have the patience for this shit today) before he quickly follows Frost up the stairs.

The steps are illuminated by the angry ruby glow of lamps shaped like faces that warp as he passes them, from ecstatic to sneering to terror and back again. The first time Monster T had climbed the stairs to the second floor, he’d wondered if this was the sight he’d be greeted with when he finally descends into hell.

He still hates it, so he allows himself a slight exhale of relief when they finally make their way into the gold-drenched lounge.

Here, everything is dripping with excess, from the sleek white leather couches to the expensive liquor, to the cocaine-sprinkled floor to the patrons’ designer wardrobes. Four go-go dancers donning gilded masks and costumes of gold mail thread through the crowd, towards a glass box in the center of the room that flares with snow-white illumination.

In spite of himself, he has to stop and stare.

There’s a woman inside the box, the light washing over and illuminating her skin, almost like a marble statue has come to life. Her hair floats like cotton candy clouds off her shoulders, and she suddenly twists her face into a wolf-like snarl, the light crumpling over the planes of her face and casting dramatic shadows along the creases of her eyes.

She lifts the end of a chain hanging in the center of her box, and holds it like an imaginary rifle, shooting at each of the women as they surround on her box, to the cheers of the crowd. The dancers in turn respond by splaying their fingers across the glass, dropping low for the ecstatic onlookers.

It’s a skit, he realizes, as he recognizes the masks as replicas of Batman’s, and the dancers strike a choreographed set of poses.

The woman suddenly jerks and claws at her neck and hair with exaggerated agony, convulsing as she draws her hair in front of her shoulders, before stretching her arms up the length of the chain, and snatching it to recline against.

Her red mouth opens wide to flash teeth whiter than bleached bone, and fever-bright eyes spark with rapturous delight as they travel somewhere beyond the crowd.

T notices that among the many golden baubles adorning her arms is a trio of Rolexes. One of them looks vaguely familiar, but he can’t quite remember where he’s seen it before.

And then the woman drops low in the box, capturing his eyes with her own as her face hovers right above his own.

There’s something about her that’s so familiar. He’s seen her before, without a doubt, but he just can’t quite place where.

Maybe he’d seen her dancing here before, he decides. That makes sense. He’ll come back for her later, after this meeting is done. Show her a good time. He'll have earned it.

She plants her puckered lips against the glass right in front of his face, before wrapping the chain around her body like a boa constrictor and writhing against it, giving him a look that would make a lesser man lose all feeling below his waist.

The woman turns her attention to one of the dancers still hovering outside her box, and she twists her hips, beckoning to her to climb inside with her.

When Frost’s hand finds his shoulder, T realizes that he’s been staring at the print left by her iridescent red lipstick for far too long.

He draws back, and quickly follows the man through yet another hallway. This one makes him immediately think of a carnival funhouse, with walls and ceilings made of polished mirror. This, too, serves a function beyond feeding the clown king’s egomania.

The Joker can see Monster T coming long before he sees him.

Frost guides T into the VIP booth, and quietly closes the door behind them.

T takes a moment to assess the room, as he hears the click of a lock.

For a trap, for an escape route, or simply because he’s never been here before, he doesn’t quite know, and he can’t afford to rule any of them out.

He knows that, worst comes to worst, two of the walls to this room are open, one to the second floor, and the other to the dance floor below, and only separated by the curtain (He also knows that it's impossible to be quick enough to jump out of the booth, let alone make it out of the club alive).

The remaining walls and ceiling of the room are also mirrored, and likely tinted to give the Joker a perfect view of every angle of the room from the very specific place he’s sitting on the white leather couch.

Monster T’s first thought, despite himself, is that the Joker is much shorter than he’d thought.

His second is that the man is just a bit ridiculous, with the flashy jewelry and neon-bright hair and white silk shirt hanging open to display a number of tattoos etched on his strangely pale skin (let alone the one on his forehead), purple bow tie hanging untied from his collar like a noose.

T gets the sense that he’d gotten his cues about how to dress from watching _Scarface_ too many times.

And then he catches himself: that’s the idea. He's a clown, isn't he? He's _supposed_ to look ridiculous.

Because as he steps around the polished glass table and extends a hand, he recognizes that the Joker’s stance is not dissimilar to that of a snake, coiled right before he strikes.

His hands are folded neatly over a purple cane with a handsome golden handle. T carefully notes the gaudy gun in it’s holster at his side, and wonders if he’s a quick draw.

He just needs to last a few minutes. He can do that. He just needs to get out alive and regroup. Grovel and postpone his plans, if he has to.

“We finally meet,” T begins, because the silence needs to be broken, and the Joker is too enamored with something on the second floor to pay him any attention.

Frost quickly waves him away.

“Ah, no,” he says, “No, he don’t shake hands.”

 _A good sign,_ T thinks, because he's heard stories about one of the rings on the Joker's fingers being a sick parody of a joy buzzer, and he knows he'll never know which it is until it's too late. 

“But sit down. Go on and have a drink,” Frost continues, gesturing to the seat opposite the Joker, before taking his place in the corner of the room.

A drink, right. This is all just routine, he should act like it. The Joker may be on his way out, but that won't mean anything if he won't live to see it.

Monster T reaches for the unsealed bottle of whiskey in the middle of the table, and pours himself a glass. It takes everything in him to keep his face blank as he carefully takes his seat.

“Hey, J,” he tries, hoping that a nickname isn’t overstepping.

The last time he’d checked, he’d still been allowed to use it. It's better that he does. Being formal implies that he either wants something (which he does) or he's trying to cover for something (which he is).

“On behalf of everybody, welcome back.”

Again, he’s greeted with a wall of silence. It's too soon to tell if the Joker is angry with him or not, but all things considered, maybe the compliment wasn’t the way to go.

He needs to remind the Joker how useful he is.

“Now,” he says, struggling to keep his voice level, “I know you brought me here to talk business. And I think our arrangement’s doing just fine. I mean, you’re making me good money. _I’m_ making _you_ good money.”

An invisible switch must have been flipped in the Joker’s head, because suddenly, his hand floats into the air, waving dismissively at his words. The grin tattooed on the back of his palm seems to leer at him.

“Oh, are you sweet talkin’ me?”

_Yes._

“No, J. I’m just sayin’. We got a good thing going for us, and I’m thinkin’, you've been gone for a while, right? People're trying to muscle in on what's yours. I'm thinking, you and me, we gotta do something big. Show everyone who's still King."

The Joker raises his hand over his mouth, and lets out a meticulous cackle that makes electricity skitter down T's spine. The infamous smile he'd only seen in old photos, because by the time he'd gotten here, the Joker had gained a new one. 

T keeps his face carefully blank as he takes a quick sip of his whiskey. The metallic aftertaste is stronger than it should be, but it's something to latch onto.

“You know,” he says, turning to Frost, _“_ I _love_ this guy! He’s _so_ intense, isn't he?”

Monster T shifts his weight, removing his sunglasses as the Joker's unblinking gaze rakes across him.

"But why, I wonder?" The Joker asks, cocking his head, and raising a finger, "Is there something _you_ know that _I_ don't?"

Oh, he knows _exactly_ what's happening.

When the crowd erupts in a chorus of whoops, he's only relieved as the Joker's eyes flick away from him and land on the dancer in the glass box, rolling her body against the go-go dancer she'd invited inside.

The woman casts a quick sideways glance in their direction, and grins, coiling herself around the chain as the dancer's dark hands creep up her thighs.

Her hair swishes away from her back for just a moment, and Monster T realizes for the first time that there's a tattoo on her left shoulder blade.

He immediately recognizes the insignia, and his heart drops to his stomach.

Of course he didn't recognize her, he rationalizes as he quickly downs the contents of his glass, and latches onto the burning in his throat, and the strangely bitter aftertaste that clings to the spaces between his teeth. She looks strikingly different in person, especially with her hair down and without the red-and-black color scheme she's famous for.

Still, it's Harley Quinn.

_That's Harley Quinn._

Harley Quinn, the Joker's girl, the greatest subject of intrigue for Gotham's tabloids.

Given that not much news of them had been coming his way, T had assumed that they'd broken up again. He'd have definitely heard if he'd finally killed her. Gotham wouldn't have shut up about it for months.

But no, here she is, right on display for him to see. Because the Joker knew that he'd have to stop and stare.

When it comes to Harley Quinn, he doesn't usually allow himself to have an opinion. Doing so usually leads to a horrifying death, in his experience, with the exception of a certain privileged few that stand outside even the Joker's reach. Monster T is not yet one of them.

But if he were to peel back the carefully constructed layers of indifference, he'd find a tiny kernel of emotion. One that simultaneously hates her with a burning passion and looks to her with a sick sense of gratitude.

Because of her, he knows that the Joker is getting weaker.

Any man who lets his woman crawl her way back into his good graces, after running wild in the streets for well over a year with not only the city's most eccentric eco-freak and cat burglar, but also a poor and short-lived excuse for a gang (and calling the Quinntets a _gang_ is questionable at best), simply isn’t who he used to be.

Any man who gives his woman as much freedom as she now has, after years of keeping her in line, simply isn't who he used to be.

Any man who ends up black-and-blue from head to toe, gift-wrapped on the steps of the police precinct after she had decided she'd  _had enough_ (and _oh,_ what a wild ride that had been), simply isn't who he used to be. 

Because of her, an idol is tarnished.

The man Monster T had come to this city to follow has been replaced by a weaker shadow of himself. Despite the years he's worked with him, and the level of intimacy and importance he has gained, this isn't the man who he'd adored from afar for years.

Because of her, he'd entertained the possibility of taking his place. Now that the Joker is weak, someone is going to dethrone him. Why shouldn't it be him?

But she might be a distraction. A way to redirect attention from his dealings. He can talk women with J. It usually puts the men he's worked with in a good mood, and though the Joker isn't like any of them, there's still a chance that this could work.

"You're a lucky man," T says with feigned casualness, "You got a bad bitch."

Again, everything in the Joker's body begins to shift. His eyes begin to blaze, like balls of lightning.

"Oh," he says, voice curling into an eager snarl as he rises to his feet, and begins to gesture broadly, "That she _is!"_

Monster T swallows sharply, but maintains his calm. This could still work out. Now that the Joker's fixated on his woman, he isn't thinking about their business dealings.

"The fire in my loins! The itch in my _crotch!_ The one, the only, the _infamous_ Harley Quinn!"

T shifts his weight, and blinks.

Now that he's looking for it, he realizes that the comforting weight of his gun is no longer there. 

He licks the crease of his lips nervously, eyes quickly shifting from Harley to the golden grin monogrammed on the Joker's Italian leather shoes.

The Joker brings his fingers to his lips, and parts the beads, playfully whistling at Harley.

Immediately, she perks, and in a golden glittery whir, she cartwheels out of the box and across the floor, the crowd parting in a sea of swishing fabric for her as she swirls to her feet. 

She shouldn't have been able to hear him. Not over the deafening boom of the club's music.

So she must have been watching them, waiting for a cue this entire time.

So the Joker must have known (Known _what?_ Known everything).

He hasn't had a chance since the second he'd stepped into the club. 

She throws her hands up and basks in the clubgoers' enthusiastic applause, before hopping up to the beaded curtain and sliding through, perched on the edge of the couch.

"Oh, come to daddy," the Joker purrs, guiding her in.

"Puddin'?" she giggles, mouth opening wide like a stab wound.

Despite his situation, he feels a slight twinge of disgust. What kind of man lets his woman call him _that,_ let alone in front of a business partner?

"Now," The Joker continues, as he slides abruptly into place next to Monster T, close enough that their thighs brush, and slings an arm around his shoulder.

He wants to move away. He does.

But he can't.

It feels like the muscles in his legs are made of lead.

T's eyes drift to the bottle of whiskey, and his hands begin to shake.

"Listen, you've been a great friend to me these past few years. And I want to honor that, I do. So when I saw you enjoying her earlier, what can I say? A stroke of _genius_ just hit me!"

The Joker claps his hands together, and whips around to the woman watching them. 

No. Oh, no.

"No," T says, "No, that's your _lady. That's your lady,_ Joker."

"That's _right!"_ he agrees, leaning against the booth and straightening his hair, "Now, _Harley,_ all good things must come to an end, don't they? That's the nature of it. We've had a good run, you and I. But it's time to move on."

Harley's mouth twitches in a slight pout, but she nods in agreement.

"And I've been thinking," the Joker says, patting T's shoulder, "What better reward? For your years of service. For your loyalty. What could I _possibly_ give to convey the _magnitude_ of _my_ gratitude to you?

"Harley, _dear,"_  he croons, jerking to his feet and reaching to guide Harley into the booth as she swings her long pale legs over the seat, _"You_ are _my_ gift to this _handsome_  man here!

 _"You_ belong to _him_ now," he says, guiding Harley's hand down to T's shoulder. Immediately, she clamps down so tightly that he has to swallow a wince, snapping at him with her bright, sharp teeth and sinking into his lap in a giggling fit. 

The tassels at the ends of her dress tickle his hands, and she clings to him like static.

He hears his low, deep laughter join in under her high tinkling giggles, but it's distant, as if at the end of a long, empty hallway.

"Oh, you're so cute!" she croons in a voice, warm and sweet as honey, lips hovering just in front of his, with no glass to separate them. 

In spite of himself, he leans forward.

"You want me?" Harley asks, cool fingers tracing the outline of his jaw, "I'm all yours."

He's close enough to see the shading of the heart perched on her right cheekbone, close enough to see the bite mark adorning the base of her neck, and despite himself, his fingers begin to drift lazily under the thin golden chains holding her dress in place, and across the faint scars on her back.

Behind her, he can see the Joker pacing like a caged animal, breathing in sharp hisses.

_No._

No, he can see where this is leading and he _can't..._

"No," he hears himself protest, his words beginning to lengthen and spill messily from his lips, "No, Joker. I don't want no beef."

"Oh, _you don't want no beef?"_ The Joker asks, his tone high and whining, scrunching his face in a parody of T's tone, "You don't want no _beef? You don't want no beef?"_

"I can't do this."

"Why, what's wrong?" Harley pouts, "Oh, you don't _like_ me?"

"I-"

"Fine!" she snaps, hopping off his lap and stomping petulantly to the other end of the booth, before sinking into the plush leather. "Don't waste my time then!"

  _Fuck._

"Look," the Joker says, kneeling down in front of T and furrowing his brow, "Are you _enjoying_ yourself?"

"J, listen, I-"

"Oh, no, you don't have to apologize to me. I mean, trust me, I _get_ it. I've been stuck with her for _six years._ She wears out on you pretty quick, doesn't she?"

T's eyes flick to Harley, patiently twirling a blue-tipped lock of hair around her fingers, running the edge of her thumbnail along the edges of her teeth. Just the act of focusing on her alone is making tiny stars of pain burst inside his skull.

"Besides," the Joker says, leaning forward to whisper conspiratorially into his ear, "just between you an' me, she's a bit-"

He twirls a finger around his temple, pursing his painted lips and whistling as his eyes roll around in their sockets.

 _"You know,"_ he adds, "I mean, the second you turn your back on her, she'll probably take out a kneecap and worm her way back in here. So y'know, we really gotta find a way to make sure she doesn't do that."

The Joker plants an elbow on the seat right next to T's knee, and drops his chin into his palm, twisting his painted lips into a frown as his eyes wander the empty space behind T's head.

"Oh!" he says, after a moment of false contemplation, snapping his fingers, "I've got it! Here!"

He draws his gun out of his holster, thumbing the hammer back and pressing it into T's stiffening fingers, before drawing his hands together into a mockery of prayer.

_Oh, fuck._

"Listen, if you just do me this _one_ favor, let's consider all your past and _perceived_ transgressions forgotten, hm? Go on, put one right in her head. Spare me the trouble."

Harley's face swims into focus behind him, and he can see her twisting her fingers into her temples, as she crosses her eyes, twitching her thumbs. _Right here,_ she mouths, _right here. Boom!_

No.

No, if he does that, hell knows what'll happen to him then.

And if he turns the gun on J? How would that be any better?

The door is locked, and Frost is still there in the corner, watching patiently. At some point during their conversation, he'd donned a pair of antiseptic gloves.

T's muscles are heavy, so heavy that he won't be able to jump out of the booth before someone stops him.

And he can't think.

The only thing that's running through his mind is the beat to which his heart is drumming.

_Get out, get out, get out, getout, getout getoutgetoutgetout._

There's only one thing that he can think of, one way he can escape.

The weight of the gun starts to shift in his hand and the world itself seems to tighten.

The edges of the room are starting to fade, yet the Joker's face seems to bob and float closer and closer, growing gaunter and increasingly skull-like.

But that makes a strange kind of sense. There's just something about him, his way of drawing in all of the light in the room and reflecting it outwards.

Even his teeth, that poisonous platinum grin, seem to brand themselves on the insides of his eyelids when he blinks, long and slow.

He knows it won't be long now, as he feels feverishly warm fingers slip into place against his own.

The gun, and the promise of a painless death, start to slip out of his grip.

T moves quickly, so fast that he barely has any time to register the sour taste of gunmetal in his mouth, but not quick enough to escape the shining silver smile opening wide to receive him.


	10. break another little bit of my heart now, darling

Harley Quinn makes it a point to live in the moment.

She doesn’t dwell on the past, because if she were to look too far back, there’d be nothing but an overexposed blur of a dozen conflicting strands of memory. Too tiresome to pick apart and string together, too confusing to decide which are truth and which are lies, and utterly useless in the long run, because they belong to the skin Harley had shed six years before.

Too soon, and the scars on her back start to ache. The voices rise like a Greek chorus and chant their disapproval and their paranoia. The burning, seething rage begins to froth over and boil her brain. The pale, sickly feeling that gnaws on her stomach bubbles up until she can taste the vomit as it gathers in her throat.

 _What’s done is done,_ she always reassures herself. It’s all history. It doesn’t matter unless she _makes_ it matter, and really, what’s the point in revisiting all the pain if the good memories are the ones that matter in the end? If they’re together again? If they’re happy again? If he’s changing?

(Because he _is,_ she _knows_ he is)

She doesn’t look to the future, because she knows the path she’s following is not a path but a steep spiral staircase into darkness. Though she wouldn’t stop her descent for the world, she’d rather not see where it is she’s going, unless his hand is there to slip into hers and steady her as she leans over the railing and laughs at the abyss.

 _It’ll all end the same,_ he’d told her once, years before, when she’d tangoed with him on stage in a stolen jester costume, when his secrets had been revealed to her one by one as she’d passed test after test.

When the dread swoops in like a bird of prey to claw at Harley’s mind, she reminds herself of what she’s learned: That darkness is coming for everyone someday, and their part in this hateful, hideous world is to open the blind, watery eyes of the unenlightened to the rot they’re ignoring. And as long as she’s here, with him, she won’t be alone when she herself reaches it.

That’s it. That’s the truth of things, at least as far as she is concerned.

The past is gone or ugly, and all she can do is take those memories and make the pain _mean_ something when it becomes impossible to ignore. The future is dying or dead, and all she can do is enjoy the ride down, because laughing beats crying any day.

And she really shouldn’t pay them so much thought, when what _really_ matters are the infinite, starry moments that define _now._

 _Now_ is the flash of his ivory tuxedo jacket as she guides his arms through the sleeves and musses his collar.

 _Now_ is hopping over spreading ruby puddles and squishy blobs of gray matter as Jonny rolls up his sleeves and gets to work.

 _Now_ is his tightening grip as they dash down halls bathed in an iridescent babble of topaz light.

 _Now_ is the black silk tassels of one of her heels tickling her ankle as it comes undone and goes sailing away.

 _Now_ is the rainbow-colored ripple as the crowd parts for them like a gaudy parody of the Red Sea.

 _Now_ is his warm hand brushing against the base of her back as they bow and curtsy, ever gracious, before exiting stage left.

 _Now_ is leaping over fluffy tracks of snow tinted tangerine and electric green and twilight blue, whooping like wild dogs as they race to their getaway car.

 _Now_ is the whine of the sirens drifting closer, and the hissed metallic curse that escapes his mouth as the realization hits her: of _course,_ their latest plaything was a snitch as well (All the better that his brains are decorating their couch, then).

 _Now_ is all that matters.

Usually, because there are exceptions. It's very important that she remembers that.

Exhibit A: The first time she’d looked ahead, and incorrectly foretold their future. The moment when the blurred shadow that they had danced through sharpened into a line, only after she’d been pushed (not fallen, _never_ fallen) far past it.

Exhibit B: The first time she’d looked back, when she’d been mottled with black and blue, wrapped nearly head-to-toe in gauze, and drowning in disillusionment as the glass had been pulled from her back shard by shard.   

Exhibit C: The first time she’d looked both forward and behind, because their reunion is always inevitable, and the line, no matter how far it is from where the rest of the world says it should be, must be enforced if they’re going to last.

Exhibit D: A week before, when the future had looked at her with kinder eyes than she knows she deserves, when the universe had approved of what they’ve become and decided to give them a gift.

Exhibit E: Hours ago, when she’d tied and retied the red silk ribbon until it was just _perfect,_ because tonight is all about looking forward.

That’s why she’s persuaded him to use _the_ car.

No, ladies and gentlemen, not just _a_ car.

 _The_ car.

The glorious purple Vaydor that illuminates them in a ghastly halo of icy, blue-tinted neon for all of Gotham to see.

It had been there to receive her when he had carried her from the place of her rebirth.

It had been the site of the consummation of their chemical wedding. And quite a bit after that.

It had carried them faithfully from the place of her operatic debut, him in his finest tailcoat and her in the liliripes and domino mask that would make her an icon.

It had been a silent observer to her earliest days, back when he’d send her out to gather protection money from bars, back when they’d still had to ask for it, back when she had been far too soft.

It’s the setting of many of their earliest memories, the good and bad alike, and the nostalgia hidden in the seams of the white leather seats had saved it from the junkyard when her Puddin’ had found himself some newer and flashier toys to play with.

Their history was made here, and the fact that he’s kept it says more than he ever has (and likely ever will).

Harley wants them to look back for the first time in a long while, because very soon, they’ll also be looking ahead.

So yes, her selective sentimentality is kicking in again.

She wiggles out of her remaining heel, and props her feet up on the dashboard with a delighted sigh as she stretches her cramped toes and rolls down the window.

A rush of icy air flows into the car, and she feels the tugging of a finger winding up her pink-stained curls.

Harley perks her head to glance at him from the corner of her eye. His finger leaves her hair to guide itself to his pursed lips, quietly shushing as his ears perk, searching for the dying drone of the sirens as he navigates the streets to avoid them.

She nods, a tiny bit pleased that he’s taken to the idea of Date Night so well.

It’s a recent development, like many things, brought on when they’d settled back into one another, and shortly before they’d decided to steamroll the city. No Bat, no business, no bullshit. Just the two of them having their fun, with all the goonies sent away so the screaming from the bedroom doesn’t cause any miscommunications the way it used to.

Date Nights aren’t really a shoot-the-cops kind of night. That’s Game Night. That’s Thursday.

It’s for the better that they avoid this. Her surprise won’t exactly go over well if they guide half the GCPD to the hideout to witness it.

Harley plants her elbow against the edge of the window, and plops her chin into her open palm, peering up through the thin snowflakes at the smear of stars smothered by light pollution.

She simply loves the nights in Gotham, where all the boundaries are blurred and everything seems to guide itself together.

When she’d first become aware of them, she’d experienced the very bizarre sensation of watching them grow longer and longer still, until they seemed to last for days on end and the rising sun seemed to be nothing more than a passing annoyance.

Many people in Gotham seem to understand this, but it’s only _her_ people, the ones who haunt the asylum and swoop from the rooftops, who truly belong to it. Oh, there are some who rotate in and out of their circle, who can afford all the day they want, like flipping a switch to be able to function in the smoggy morning.

But her people don’t just live in it- they embody it. The beauty, the glamour, the strangeness, the immortality, the insanity and all the things she’d been drawn to since she’d first set foot in Gotham, all the things she'd been missing since her family had whisked themselves off to Bensonhurst after the Waynes died. It brings them all together before the break of dawn scatters them into their hiding places, as the cattle emerge from their hiding holes and start up the machine of society that she and hers had worked so hard to sabotage (or protect, in the case of the Bat) under the watchful eye of darkness.

Oh, but that’s just part of the fun, right? The game carries on, and she’s more than content to play as long as she has a partner.

And that’s what he is now. Her _partner._

Not that anyone- even _he-_ will admit it.

But that doesn’t really matter to Harley (Well, not _that_ much. Sometimes).

A lot of things between them go unsaid.

It would be a lie to say that she wouldn’t murder everyone in the damn city to hear him finally say it, but she knows that isn’t likely.

But that’s fine, isn’t it? Because actions speak louder than words. And how else could they have risen as high as they have, if she hadn’t been as close to his equal as anyone could ever hope to be? How else could they have become royalty, if they hadn’t conquered Gotham side by side? Does it really matter if he still parrots the title she’d held years ago, if he still doesn’t say, _I love you?_

She knows, despite everything, that he does.

He _does._ He _has_ to.

A stray snowflake catches itself on the tip of her finger and pirouettes like a ballerina, before dissolving into a tiny globe of freezing water that runs down her gold-painted nail, before she rolls the window up.

Winter seems to be coming much earlier than usual this year. Usually, the snows don’t start until after Halloween has come and gone.

 _Maybe it’s Freeze,_ Harley thinks. _He’s been quiet for a long time._

If so, she really ought to thank him, because it grants her a sense of relief.

In all likelihood, the reason why Poison Ivy has been missing from all her usual haunts is simply because she’s sealing herself up inside some remote corner of Robinson Park, far from any prying eyes.

She's only grown more plant-like over the years, and to the best of Harley’s knowledge, Pam has started experiencing the seasons in an entirely different way. If she’d been manic during spring and euphoric during summer, it should stand to reason that she’s going to sleep her way through winter like the rest of the city’s flora.

It’s reassuring, because it allows them both some breathing room.

Maybe sleeping on everything will give her time to settle down. Maybe in the spring, she’ll awaken with an open mind and a sunny mood, and she’ll be rested enough to listen when Harley says those two little words that she knows will change everything.

Lately, whenever they meet, all they seem to do is fight, and if Pam were to know right now, she might do something unforgivable.

She knows that Pam isn’t yet capable of standing outside herself and looking at the things she’s done, that if she were to know now, it would undo months of repairing half-burnt bridges. Harley is desperate to keep that from happening, so she has to keep this quiet for now.

She knows what Pam thinks about children, and what she thinks about the Joker.

She knows that the idea of mingling the two is only going to spell disaster in Pam’s mind, especially when she learns that Harley has no intention of leaving him when her baby arrives.

She also knows that the two of them are far more similar than they realize, and that in a perfect world, Pam would be right here, by her side, and Harley wouldn’t have to keep this from her as long as she’s planning to.

But this isn’t a perfect world. And though there’s a chance that Pam might shake herself from some of the hypocrisy that weighs her down, it won’t be now, when all the words they exchange sting and slice like razor-edged feathers.

And she knows that Pam still hasn’t quite grasped the girlfriend gag.

Not many of them have, for that matter, but that’s entirely their loss. Harley is only doing as they’d done when they’d still been becoming: She is taking the thing that destroys, embracing it, and bending it to her will.

It hasn’t been without risk. It hadn’t been without suffering. It had taken a very long time.

But the thing is, it _worked._

And because it worked, all this history between them, all this pain both endured and inflicted, is worth it.

And because it did, she knows that when she takes this next great step, she won’t be alone.

To be fair, it has been several years in the making, and some people simply don’t have the patience to follow along with long jokes.

But they’re getting close to the punchline. If Pam and the rest don’t get it yet, they will soon.

She doesn’t know when exactly she had started laughing, but it’s become so powerful that her chest feels it might burst into a swarm of gibbering insects, and she quickly blinks away the tears of amusement that are beginning to gather in the corners of her eyes.

A pale, warm hand slides up her leg, and pauses at the top of her thigh, tapping _shave-and-a-haircut_ urgently on her kneecap with a shining ring.

Harley quickly swallows the laugh with a scowl, following the ivory arm to a pouting face as her fingertips smear away the last of the moisture.

“What?”

His not-eyebrows furrow, casting fascinating shadows across his forehead as his gaze shifts to her feet.

_Oh puh-lease!_

“Oh, _come on,”_ Harley whines, “You always do that when _I_ drive!”

“What’re you talkin’ about? You _never_ drive.”

“Well, I _used_ to. You remember, right, Puddin’?”

“Sure I do, I just wouldn’t exactly call _this”_ \- he jerks the wheel, making the tires scream as the Vaydor makes an abrupt pirouette through a side street, so quickly that her eyes rattle in their sockets- “-driving.”

_Well, he ain’t exactly wrong there, but..._

“Hey, it worked, didn’it? They never caught us.”

_Okay, so they caught us like, twice? Three times? Eight? So what? That’s basically never._

His eyes flick to hers, and narrow.

“Oh, what _ever!”_ Harley snaps as she sees his mouth open to correct her.

She stomps her feet on the floor of the car with more noise than necessary, and slouches in her seat, drawing her lips into the sourest pout she can muster as her hands drift down to rest on her stomach.

He only rolls his eyes, and fixes them on the road ahead. The sirens have all but died down, so they’re probably in the clear.

 _Good,_ she thinks as her fingers float over her abdomen, the sensation like roses blooming under her skin. It's far too early for anything to start kicking, so much so that she isn't even showing yet. But still, she'd like to pretend.

Everyone, even Jonny, is under strict orders to keep their distance for the rest of the night, though this time, the reason will be different than the usual bed-breaking policy.

There will be no interruptions, because tonight is about looking forward in a way she only had in long-dead fantasies of electric blue kitchens and fancy juicers and bleached-blonde hair tightly curled and _-God forbid!-_ mom jeans.

Tonight is about something new, something she knows can’t have arrived at a better time.

Harley Quinn is delusional, but not _that_ delusional. She knows damn well what she would have done if it had happened any sooner.

If the little pink plastic stick had read ‘positive’ any more than a handful of months ago, she’d have listened to the rattling voices that rushed to crowd the inside of the skull with horrifying suggestions. She’d have gone to one of the doctors who see people like her for a fat wad of bills, and asked for a different option. She’d have destroyed the test, and drowned out the memory until it had resembled nothing more than a bad dream, just like she does to so many of the others.

But it didn’t. 

And now?

There’s no better time than now.

Because _now,_ everything is aligned in their favor. If Harley didn’t know better, she’d say that the universe itself was giving them its blessing.

Now, they’ve taken their rightful places at the top of Gotham’s food chain. There will be no more days of counting bullets before a heist. Not now that they have an arsenal that would make the deadliest assassin in the world wet himself. No more sleeping in the same worn-out costume over and over in seedy motel rooms or the driest corners of abandoned warehouses, or the reclined seats of the car with her knees spilling into his lap. Not now that they have a fleet of high-rise hideouts awaiting their arrival. No more pacing an ever-shifting territory with uncertain borders like a pair of starving, rabid lions, now that the entire city is their playground.

Now, they’re practically untouchable. The connections they’ve made run so deep that he hadn’t even had to escape Arkham. He’d simply walked out the front gate, free of charge, thanks to an army of carefully-blackmailed, snappily-dressed lawyers. They have a club in the center of town, and no one's been able to shut it down yet, until tonight. They have an army of foot soldiers of all shapes and sizes, all rabid for orders.

Now, even the big, bad Bat has changed. His anger is finally spilling over, so her Puddin’s long, stubbornly-held belief in its inevitability simply must be true. He’s winning, just like she knew he would, and that opens yet another door.

Now, they’re back together.

No, not just back together, _better_ together. Better than they’ve ever been before.

Unlike the early days, Harley now stands on a level nearer to his own than anyone else will ever get, and she climbs closer still.

Unlike the past few years, defined by long absences, vicious screaming matches, and the ecstatic satisfaction of finally returning his blows with her own, of finally inflicting all the wounds he’d given to her, they’ve settled into a strange kind of understanding. Which, she supposes, is bound to happen when one finally fulfills their year-long revenge fantasies, and the Joker has always learned best through pain. A kick to the ribs or two or twelve or forty-five (not that she _counted,_ or anything) had certainly done wonders when it came to learning a scrap of empathy.

Now, _he’s_ changing. Becoming whatever it is is next in his long history of evolution. From a simple smile-gas-peddling serial killer to his what-the-hell-was-I-thinking-phase (His words, not hers. She actually thinks the papier-mâché head attached to that old roadster was kind of charming before he dumped it in the river), to his return to form, to his beginnings as a gangster.

And then she had arrived.

And here they are, in transition once more. This time, though, _she_ is going to be the one who decides what is to be the next act in their lives.

Everything has been conspiring to make this happen.

It’s all worth it. It has to be.

It has to be.

It _has_ to be.

_It has to-_

“Oh, _look!”_ she squeals, pointing to a distant blackish blob on the side of the street ahead.

A cluster of pedestrians, gathered around what looks to be a mediocre street performer.

The Joker inhales sharply through his nose, and the corners of his lips twist upwards, eyes ablaze with the imaginary scent of blood.

For a moment, his bright eyes meets hers, and an electric thrill shoots up Harley's spine. 

 _“C’mon,”_ she hisses through gritted teeth, “C’mon, Puddin’, _do it!”_

He floors it.

They rocket forward, and the street in front of her becomes a blurred tunnel as the people dive over themselves to get out of their path.

But the slight wet _thunk_ that makes Harley jerk in her seat, and almost consider using her seat belt, tells her otherwise.

The Joker hits the gas once more, trailing a pinkish soup in their wake, and the two of them collapse into hysterics as they whip towards the waterfront.

She just _loves_ moments like this, with the laughter bubbling freely from her lips, when his head is thrown back and his eyes are screwed shut from laughing so hard, his cackling echoing along the creases of her brain.

So of course, _he_ has to ruin it.

A familiar mechanical growl begins to rumble behind them, and the both of them swell at the sound, for entirely different reasons.

 _“Oh,”_   the Joker croons as he peers eagerly into his mirror, before turning to her and flashing a brilliant silver promise, _“We_ have got company!”

No. No. Absolutely _not._ Not on Date Ni-

But the look he's giving her reminds her of an excited puppy. Who is she to ruin that? And wouldn’t it be better for them to come home to her announcement high off adrenaline, rather than dissatisfied?

_Okay, y’know what? Fine, let’s do it! He's right, this'll be fun!_

“Batsy, batsy, batsy!” she sniggers, lips curling into a grin.

Harley leans back in her seat as the car swerves wildly through the deserted streets, scarring the pavement with tire marks as the Batman follows.

Follows. He just follows. He doesn't use any of his fancy tricks. He's just keeping a careful pace behind them, no matter how many corners they cut.

_Now why-_

The car lurches sharply, sending Harley flying towards the windshield before she catches herself on the dashboard, hands splayed wide.

She scowls, glancing towards the rear window, but instead of the Batmobile, she sees the ragged black shadow of a cape fluttering outside.

No.

No, no, no. This isn’t right. This isn't fair. This isn’t how it goes. Is he forgetting the rules _again?_

 _“Stupid_ Bats!” Harley snaps, ripping the Joker’s gun from his holster and leaning back to empty the clip into the roof.

 _“You’re ruinin’ Date Night!”_ she screams as the inside of the car erupts in violent bursts of white.

Though her eardrums are beginning to roar from the gunshots, she can still hear the Joker’s squawking laugh, as he snatches his gun out of her hands.

“Oh, can you _believe_ it?” he asks, leaning close enough to touch the tip of her nose with his own as he pockets it, “He’s gotten even clingier than _you_ used to be!”

No, it isn't funny. It's wrong. 

 _“Puddin’,”_ she whines, putting on her best pout, “This ain’t _fun_ anymore! I wanna go home!”

The look he gives her makes her wonder if she’s sprouting a second head.

“Look, I’ve got somethin’ _real_ important t' tell you, okay?”

“And we can’t do that _here?_ At the looney bin?”

_Oh, right, because sayin', "Mistah J, I’m pregnant," totally won’t end in us crashin' through a brick wall, right?_

“No!”

“Why?” he groans.

“Because…” Harley blinks, fishing for an excuse, “Because I’ve got a good streak goin’ for me right now! I mean, when’s the last time I’ve gone _this_ long without gettin’ caught? Don’t’cha wanna see how far I can get?”

_Because every time someone gets arrested, we switch hideouts. And there’s somethin’ waitin' for you in our apartment that no one else knows about but me. And you really. Need. To. See. It._

He purses his lips, imitating the look of a man in deep, contemplative thought.

“Nah.”

An ear-curling, deafening screech begins to rattle from the roof of the car, and the nasty grin that had begun to crawl onto the Joker’s face sours into a growl as a shower of sparks begins to rain down on them.

A corner of the roof is jerked back with a metallic whine, and a line of molten metal begins to scratch it’s way above her head.

He’s sawing it open. He's going to claw his way in through the roof and snatch them.

_Unless..._

Harley opens the glove box, overflowing with old junk, and starts fishing around in the clutter for a spare knife.

The Joker roars, slamming the roof with his fist as his hair flops down in neon green clumps in front of his face.

_Wait. Lemme get this straight: You’re pissed about the car. The fuckin’ car?_

_Nope. Nuh-uh._ _Fuck sentimentality. This junker’s gettin’ set on fire as soon as Batbrain’s gone._

“Hope y’got insurance,” she smirks, looking coolly ahead as his head swivels to snarl at her.

“Harley,” he huffs, blowing streaks of hair out of his eyes.

“Aw, _c’mon!”_ she teases, “Didn’t’cha always say y’wanted a skylight?”

_“Harley.”_

“Oh?” she goads, “I’m _sorry,_ am I makin’ you-”

_SMASH!_

The second corner of the roof has been torn open, and the roof begins to scream as it’s skin is peeled back.

Harley finally spies a familiar mother-of-pearl handle, and pries the switchblade free from it’s place wedged in the center of a deck of playing cards.

There’s a sharp intake of breath to her left, telling the hairs on Harley’s neck to stand at attention.

Oh shit.

She knows that sound. She knows that wild look sparking in his eyes. She knows she’s about to fend for herself, but she can’t stop her blood from beginning to boil, because they should be past this by now.

Harley stiffens as she looks ahead, and stares at the concrete dividers the car is hurtling towards, and the glassy, moonlit water that lies beyond them.

Oh _shit._

_“Puddin’?”_

There’s a rocking _thunk_ as the Bat’s boots bounce off the roof and the spark shower abruptly ends.

 _Oh_ _shit._

He peeks at her from the corner of his eye, shoulders raising just the slightest bit, frown curling into a sheepish grin.

_Oh, you fuckin'-_

“Puddin’, _I can’t swim!”_ Harley shrieks as the concrete crunches under the hood of the car and the water rises up to meet her.

She sees the driver’s side door flash and a streak of white, and when the windows explode in a blizzard of crunching glass, Harley is equal parts livid and terrified.

She goes flying through the windshield as the hood of the car noses it’s way into the river mud, and her forehead slams onto it with a _thwack._

The air in her lungs bellows out in a luminous silvery bubble as her abdomen explodes in pain.

The world around her begins to warp and blur, but she remains just awake enough for a fun little flora factoid to pop into her head.

_… The aquavilla vines of Portugal can breathe underwater..._

Oh, she’ll be just _fine,_ Harley realizes, thanks to a little gift a dear friend of hers gave her to remember her by.

But for how long? It’s been years since Pam had given her the injection, gifting her with the strength to recover from a high and jagged fall (along with a few extra perks). Harley can’t spring off of walls the way she used to, nor can she heal from bullet wounds so quickly. Sure, she can still touch Pam without trouble, but that could change too.

So she doesn’t assume this will last long. Already, she can feel her lungs beginning to ache as the fading formula struggles to accommodate her predicament.

Long enough, she decides as she glances around, desperately trying to swallow the irrational panic that's quivering in her chest.

 _I can breathe, I can breathe, I can breathe._  

Harley can't swim, but she can breathe. She can drag herself onto the docks as long as Red's formula holds out for a bit longer. And it will. She knows it will.

She’s caught in the bite of a mouth lined with gleaming glass teeth that tear her dress to ribbons, and send wispy red flowers blooming from where the jags connect with her skin.

Harley winces, and reaches for a silver flash bobbing its way down the hood like a strange metal fish, snatching the knife she’d lost a grip on during the impact.

She starts stripping away triangles of ruined fabric, and grimaces as she nicks the back of her palm.

So this isn’t _exactly_ what she’d had in mind when she’d envisioned her dress getting ripped to shreds tonight, but she’ll make do. And when she gets out of here, she’ll slash up his entire wardrobe to compensate.

_Say goodbye to that tacky fuckin’ Hawaiian shirt, Puddin’, ‘cause that’s the first thing on my list._

Her train of thought is interrupted by a low, percussive rushing noise somewhere above her.

Harley glances up, and jerks at the sight of a shadow slicing through the roiling surface of the water.

_Oh._

Harley carefully goes limp, draping herself across the hood as she ignores the sliding of the rings along her fingers, the mounting pressure in her lungs, the urgent aching in her gut, and the swirls of violet edging into her vision.

 _That’s it, c’mere_ , she thinks, watching the Bat slither through the water through slitted eyes, and feeling him snake his hand past the floating charms of her necklaces.

She waits, until she can feel his fist close around a cluster of floating hair, guiding her head up for a closer look.

And… _Now!_

Harley’s eyes snap open, and she screams the last of the air from her lungs as she lunges, slashing at his arm.

But she misses.

There isn't time to do anything other than gape at thefist flying towards her face, pouring her back into the violet darkness.

 

* * *

 

It isn’t absolute for long.

Because very soon, there is an urgent pressure on her lips, and a heavy pain in her lungs.

But never mind the pain, because this is fucking _priceless._

Harley snatches the sides of the Bat’s stubbly jaw, slurping sloppily at his lips.

Immediately, her jerks back, slamming her roughly onto the hood of the Batmobile.

Harley’s head spins, but she finds the clarity to wonder why exactly it is that Selina’s so attached to him. Clearly, it _isn’t_ his kissing prowess. She’d probably get more of a response from a dead fish.

As she cackles at her own private joke, lungfuls of water hack their way up from her chest and spill down her chin to join streaks of blood and smears of waterlogged lipstick.

She hopes that look he’s giving her is because he caught the bile on her lips.

_No? Well, howsabout another taste?_

Harley pushes her way up once more, to kiss the boulder of his chin, but immediately, there’s a hand around her neck and a clattering pain inside the back of her skull that makes her lose all focus of the Bat’s looming face, forehead crimped in eternal anger.

Instead, she finds herself lost in a field of moving yellow lights caught in a deep blue web, that stretches and reforms itself into the dull interior of the Batmobile.

She tugs her wrists experimentally and _\- yep. Shoulda known._

The cuffs binding her wrists to a metal bar on the inside of the door are too strong for her to break, despite her strength.

She shifts her weight in the stiff seat, listening to the soaked fabric squelch and feeling icy streams of river water trickle down her aching thighs and gather into a puddle beneath her bare toes.

Harley absentmindedly taps a sloshing pattern, testing the strength of the cuffs binding her ankles to a similar bar bolted to the floor.

_And… nope. Still too strong. Damn._

She won’t be able to make it out of the cuffs until he unlocks her, so she settles for playing with the rings she'd borrowed from the Joker hours ago, sliding them up and down and around and around her fingers. 

Ordinarily, she wouldn’t let that little tidbit of information stop her from writhing and twisting and making herself as much of a nuisance as possible, but tonight?

_Well, tonight’s just not my night, is it?_

Besides, he won. Fair and square, despite the Joker’s… oh, Harley’s feeling generous, so she’ll call it a _slip-up._

A momentary indiscretion. A ghost from their earlier days they _apparently_ have yet to fully exorcise.

Tonight is a learning experience, Harley decides. A reminder that they still have a ways to go.

She’ll enjoy reminding him of it when she gets out, whenever that _when_ may be.

See, this is just the next step in the game: the Bat takes her to the police station, Harley poses for her newest mugshot, she gets promptly whisked off to Arkham, _blah, blah, blah…_

Assuming she doesn’t wiggle out of his grip somewhere along the way. He’s getting tougher to slip away from, but managing an escape is still absolutely within the realm of possibility.

Escape being the key word. She doesn’t expect that a certain someone will be waiting for her with a platinum grin and a glimmering machine gun when she arrives.

Harley’s known for a very long time that she’s the closest anyone will ever get to being his equal. It’s only recently that he’s beginning to realize this as well. One of the consequences of this new revelation is that if he’s going to treat her as such, she’ll have to act the part.

To do so, Harley won’t be relying on him for an escape plan.

In theory. If it takes him a week to lose track of his socks without her around, he’ll last no more than three months, tops, before he blows a hole in the side of the asylum to come sweep her off her feet and carry her away. Assuming she fails to do so herself beforehand.

Still, three months is an awful long time to wait, and Harley Quinn happens to be a _very_ busy person with a life of her own to live, _thank you very much._

(Never mind all the terrifying implications of what Arkham and the Bat will do once they find out)

And it would be a lie to say that she isn’t just the slightest bit bitter about him leaving her behind. What better revenge could there be than spending a week or two with someone else?

Not Pam, though, _definitely_ not Pam. Harley’s not about to wake Sleeping Beauty to deal with the wrath of a thousand _I-told-you-so’s._

Whoever it is _(Selina._ She wants to sleep over at Selina’s and play with her cats and steal a diamond or two to make herself feel better. And complain about Batman’s lips to someone who understands) doesn’t matter right now.

Right now, she’ll enjoy the moment.

Harley’s always liked riding in the Batmobile, despite how cramped and dark it is. It always drives so much faster than any of J’s cars, and she likes trying to find out which of the flashing buttons on his dashboard do what.

So far, she’s figured out exactly one, which is definitely _not_ the radio, but she doesn’t really want to try her luck with any of the others.

The Batman isn’t one for talking. Hasn’t been from the start, so it’s not really that much of a surprise that he’s as quiet as he is on the drive to the station.

Still, there’s something. Something that doesn’t feel quite right about all of this. Something that goes beyond his usual quiet anger.

“Hey, B-man?” she tries, “Would’ya mind gettin’ these cuffs off? I’m startin’ t’lose circulation over here.”

Silence.

“You don’t happen t’have my baseball bat, do you? Y’know, the old one, from way back in the day, with all the scribbles on it? See, I lost it last week, an’ I’m not _quite_ done with th’ new decorations.”

Nothing. Not even a glance her way.

Oh, he’s _always_ such a killjoy. She gets it, it’s his job, but _jeez._ What does she have to do, bring up the weather?

“So… About that snow a couple a’ hours ago? Hell of a thing, ain’t it? An’ we ain’t even halfway t’Halloween yet! Y’ _know,_ me an’ Mistah J are _thinkin’_ about throwin’ a-”

“He left you to drown.”

 _“Huh?”_ Harley tilts her head to the side, tossing wet ropes of hair over her shoulder to better expose her ear, and starts bobbing her head to shake whatever’s still sloshing around inside her head out. “Sorry, Bats, your voice thingie makes it awful hard t’understand you a lot a’ the time, and y'know, I _think_ I still got a lil’ bit a’ water in here? You’re gonna have t'repeat yourself.”

“He left you to drown,” he repeats, his tone as wooden and rehearsed as a D-list actor’s when he reads off a second-rate script for the first time. “He left you to _die.”_

_Oh, God. Here we go again. Broken record, broken record, broken record._

Immediately, Harley scoffs, eyes rolling as she stubbornly _thunks_ her forehead against the cool bulletproof glass to soothe the stinging pain in her forehead. She focuses on the stippled streaks of passing skyscraper lights zooming by, and decides that maybe a bit of water in the ear is a good thing, if it means she can’t hear him lying.

That’s what he’s doing: he’s _lying_ to her, because he knows the truth. He knows it, but he doesn’t want to say it. Because if he does, he has to admit he’s wrong about her, that she is a mockery of everything he supposedly stands for. That she is a living testament to all of his failures.

“He used you as a distraction, Harleen, because he doesn’t care about you.”

There he goes again, using the name of a ghost.

 _Oooh, scary._ _Better try again next time, Batbrain. But hey, points for bein’ half right!_

The Joker had left her as bat-bait. She knows that. What is she, _stupid?_

She also knows that as soon as she’s out of Arkham, as soon as she makes her way back to him, she’ll get hers. All things considered, maybe a few hours or days or weeks in the slammer won’t be too bad, so she can dream up a dozen ways to get even.

But he doesn’t want her dead. If he did, she would be. No doubt about it. She’d have been dead a long time ago.

And he’d known that the Bat would save her. He always does, _of course he does._

For now.

But wait. No, if Batman hadn’t overstepped himself, the Joker wouldn’t have left her. She wouldn’t be here.

It’s _his_ fault. It usually is, and like the lying cheat that he is, he never owns up to it.

Sometimes, he even has the nerve to blame _her._ There's one instance in particular that comes to mind, that, if it hadn't happened years before without much change, she would have been certain is the cause of his stone-cold silence towards her.

And technically speaking,  _she_ hadn't done it. 

Besides, if they really have to go digging up old corpses to assign blame, Harley knows that it’s his fault. The Bat has no one to blame but himself, for not getting there fast enough.

There are rules to this game, she knows. One of them is that the Bat must always be quick and clever enough to stop them.

But he hadn’t. He’d broken it, and his bird had died. That's all there is to it.

And he’d moved on well enough. Hadn't even smashed her smile in. Looked at her just about the same, even though he had to start treating her like a threat, and not a lovesick woman playing dress-up for a few months. Angry as always, but not really any more than before, when he'd had his flock.

This anger of his has been growing for a while. Two years, if she had to put a date to it.

Overcompensating for the Boy Scout across the bay, she'd decided some time ago.

“He'll only ever hurt you, Harley,” he finally adds, as if the words themselves are sharpened and slicing at his tongue.

Most of the time, he sounds like he’s at least pretending to care. Not tonight.

But that doesn't really matter, because she never believes him anymore. The last time she had, she’d ended up broken and bloody at the bottom of a four-story drop, staring at the smoggy sky from a pile of trash with tears stinging in her eyes.

That won’t happen again.

“And you _won’t?”_

For the first time, he turns to look at her. This is the part where he denies it, where she huffs and turns away.

But instead he says, "He took something very important from me. Now I'm doing the same."

And she really starts to _wonder._

This entire time, there’s been something distinctly uncomfortable about his silence. Something bitter and burning, almost like a chemical fire.

He isn’t just angry, he’s _seething._

A quiet, almost monstrous fury is radiating off him in waves, and it’s making a very small and underfed part of Harley, deep within her rib cage and buried at the bottom of her heart, start to flutter incessantly. 

A larger and far more dominant part is beginning to worry for herself. Because he has just reduced her to a _thing._

The buzzing chorus of voices is stirring, summoned by the echoing pulse in her front of head.

Among the incoherent rambling of paranoid and vicious delusions are the lessons she’d received years ago, shortly before she’d made her dazzling debut at the Opera House.

When her bat was bare of any markings and her arm still trembled from exhaustion when she’d hold a gun aloft.

When the tattoo on her shoulder blade was the only thing on her back, and it’s meaning hadn’t yet changed from a declaration of ownership to a weapon of smoke and mirrors.

When she’d listen with fervent adoration to the words whispered in her ear in the early hours before the light. About this city and it’s ancient sickness. About the freedom she could find in the dark if she only descended lower and lower still. About the dreamlike cloth smothering them in false reality, that they are tasked with tearing holes into.

About how, someday, the day will come when the great pretender will fall like the rest of them had. He’ll slip from the ties of morality and society and join them in the killing. He’ll blow out the tiny, yet persistent candle flame that all the fools in Gotham cling to. He’ll see that it’s all just one big, twisted joke.

 _It won’t be long now,_ one of the voices whispers, taking on the cadence of Harley’s former self, as she watches his fingers tighten on the wheel.

 

* * *

 

Something is wrong.

The dull, pulsating ache in her abdomen hasn’t died yet. The scratches and bruises she’d sustained are already fading and closing, but her stomach is the same. It shouldn’t be.

Something very wrong is happening inside her, something that might be beyond the capabilities of Pam’s gift.

The thought burrows into her mind as her ink-dipped fingers are rolled across the page, and it snaps at her when she shuffles up against the wall to take her newest mugshot.

Ordinarily, Harley strikes a pose. She sticks out her tongue, crosses her eyes, bares her teeth, or, if she’s feeling really spicy, flips the bird.

But something is wrong, and it's taking everything in her to stop from screaming, so she keeps her lips pressed in a defiant pout, and winces as the flash leaves stars bursting in her brain.

Not even the realization that they’ve finally stopped labeling her as Harleen Quinzel is enough to lighten her mood.

The only thing that can is getting out of here. As soon as she can.

She needs to get out. She needs to find the Joker. She needs to tell him  _now,_ because they've just taken her blood, and in a handful of days, they'll know too. She needs to get help.

Harley immediately begins scanning the windows, picking apart the bustling crowd, where a dark-skinned woman she’s never seen before is scribbling away on a clipboard offered to her by an officer.

She could twist out of the arms of the beefcake holding her. She could kick the woman stripping her of her jewelry in the face. She could flip over the table in front of her. She could smash open the window with the chair once she rips it out from under the man sitting across from her. She could snatch the gun from the officer's-

_Wait._

Two of the men passing her by are holding a box with a very familiar tag sprayed on the side.

One she'd broken into the precinct to make herself, because she'd figured, hey, if she's going to keep running in and out of here for the rest of her life, she may as well skip digging through everyone else's crap when she's looking for hers.

That's _her_ box.

 _"Hey!"_ she snaps, but the words tumble out softer and squeakier than she'd intended, "Hey, that's mine! That's _mine!_ What're you doin' with it?"

Harley lunges like a rabid dog, tearing herself free of the man holding her and making a mad dash after them in a stumbling sprint.

She gets as far as the doorway before she trips over the chain binding her ankles a short distance apart from one another, and she's buried by a swarm of furious arms that keep her there. A hood is shucked down over her head.

There's a sharp prick in her neck that immediately turns her legs soft and rubbery, but she's conscious enough to squint at the tiny pinpricks of light that penetrate the bag, trying and failing miserably to make sense of where she's being taken.

All the while, _this isn't right, this isn't right, this isn't right,_  begins to play on loop in her head.

Because it isn't. Sure, she's been roughed up by the cops quite a bit, and sure, she's been drugged by them a few times, but this...

The wind is knocked from her lungs when she lands hard on a cold metal floor, rolling a short, slippery distance before she bumps up against the wall of what she thinks is a truck. There's a sharp clanging and the clicking of what must be at least dozen locks, and she is left in absolute darkness.

The floor begins to rumble as the truck pulls out into the street.

Something tells her that she isn't going to Arkham.

Harley wants to pull herself up, to bring her knees to her chest and huddle in the corner, but it feels like the bones in her body are leaden. She's pinned, like a butterfly in a display case, and there is nothing to keep her mind from scattering off in a thousand different directions.


	11. guess my race is run

George Harkness is the boy no one wants.

That, if nothing else, he knows for certain.

He is the boy who is not so much a son as he is a mistake. A living, breathing reminder to the man who is not his father that his wife was only human. That she could make a single mistake years ago, and that mistake could come to life and have a voice and live in their home and eat their food and drain their bank account. 

 _(Bastard_ is the word for what he is, he learns, long before he slowly unravels the definition of the word _son_ after years of hearing it in passing. So _bastard_ is what he becomes)

He is the boy who survives every fist thrown at him, and learns that the only way to gain any respect in the world is to return them. The only way to wriggle free of the suffocating grip is to bite and snarl like an animal, and see every outstretched hand as one that holds a knife he doesn't see yet.

 _(Feral_ is the word for what he is. _Child_ is not. So he shows his teeth, and _feral_ is what he becomes)

He is the boy with sticky fingers and a bottomless stomach, who is sent home from school more often than not, who isn't worth the trouble to educate despite how quickly he tests out of all his classes. Because he is a filthy, wild boy, and that's all he'll ever be.

 _(Stupid_ is the word for what he is. Never mind all the evidence to the contrary, that if it hadn't come from the Harkness boy, it would have been celebrated, because _genius,_ he is not. So he stops listening. He stops trying. And though _stupid_ isn't something he can become, it's something he can believe, and _stupid_ is much easier than  _smart)_

He is the boy who lives in the small, run-down house at the edge of Kurrumburra, with a drunk for a not-father who feeds the furious flames of his anger, year after year.

He is the boy with a fading shadow for a mother, who does nothing to stop the fire, who doesn't look her greatest mistake in the eye, yet burns her hands every now and then trying and failing to contain the blaze.

He is the boy who asks her again and again, _who is he?_

(And no: there isn't an answer.)

He is the boy with a troubled mind and trembling hands, who learns to steady them as he sharpens a novelty toy in the shade until it’s razor-sharp. Who lets the anger settle deep in his gut and fester like a thick black tar that bubbles whenever he glances up at the man sitting on the porch, slurping a can of cheap beer before it joins the rest, in a shiny silver row along the railing. Who wonders if he has the angle just right for a clean slice, or if he should make it hurt.

He is the boy who wakes up one morning when he’s fourteen, and stops. And wonders: is there a way to escape it?

He is the boy who walks deep into the Outback with the clothes on his back and a knife-sharp piece of wood in each hand, searching for the inner peace he'd read about in dog-eared library books he had stolen from his school the last time he’d bothered to show up.

It's called a walkabout, he’s pretty sure. And it's not exactly a rite of passage made for him, but nothing is, so really, what's the harm in him trying to claim one more thing for himself?

He's the right age. And he hasn't been a boy in a very long time, so in his mind, he may as well become a man.

His pace is sluggish and almost hesitant, but he keeps walking, keeps nicking the pads of his fingers along the edges of the boomerangs.

He plans on burning them. On finally letting all of his rage out where no one else can see it, and leaving it buried in a small corner of the wilderness. On finding some kind of enlightenment, if it’s even there to be found.

As it turns out, it isn’t. Because of course it isn't. Because it wouldn't be. Not for him.

He lasts around four months.

Four months, before his patience finally explodes.

Four months, before he comes home angrier than when he’d left.

Four months, before he stumbles in through the back door and collapses on the couch.

Four months, before he decides there is nothing that can be done.

 

* * *

  

His mother doesn’t believe that, so as soon as he’s old enough, he finds himself in the army.

She says it's because he needs to learn discipline. But he knows it's because as soon as he hits the right age, he's getting kicked out, and for as much and as little as she's done for him, she still wants him to end up somewhere other than a jail cell.

So he goes quietly. Nods his head and says, _yeah, sure Mum, you're right._

And for what it's worth, he's excited.

Mostly because there’s only so much you can do in a town with less than five thousand residents, and he’d already broken into the local Big W at least eight times without getting caught.

So he's starving for something new. Something stimulating.

And that's what it is. 

If nothing else, it's something to distract him. Something to channel all that anger through. Something to keep the gears in his mind turning in a direction that doesn't lead to walking down streets at three in the morning looking for ways into houses.

Hell, he starts to think he's  _good_ at it.

Before he can blink, he's top of his class in the Special Forces, without a clear idea as to how he'd gotten there. 

He's calmer than he's been in years. 

He even picks up a nickname, that he decides suits him much better than George.

 _George_ sounds like a used car salesman. The nice boy you take home to meet your parents, who's clean-shaven because he wants to be and not because the army doesn't exactly approve of mutton chops as a fashion statement.

 _Digger,_ on the other hand...

Well, _Digger_ sounds pretty badass.

Digger is the guy who can outdrink every man he sees, who can throw a projectile with stunning accuracy (Not that his boomerangs are used as much more than a party trick these days, because no one seems to take them seriously), who can swallow any intense emotion in a single second, whose been in every brawl anyone can name, and still somehow slithers free of any punishment, because of a combination of his own incredible talent as a soldier, and his flawless ability to pin the blame on someone else.

They all hate him, just a bit, he knows. Not that he cares all that much.

He's not here for them. Not here for his country. Not even here for himself, he realizes when he sits down and really thinks about it.

He's here for her. Because there's a small part of him, buried deep in all that muck, that thinks if he becomes someone, his mother will be able to look at him with something other than shame. That she'll see him and realize that maybe, he's more than just a mistake. Maybe he's worth something after all.

She never does. Because he never sees her again.

Because she dies.

The one time Ian Harkness invites him anywhere, it's to her funeral. 

It's small. He can count the number of people who attend on the fingers of a single hand.

He, the man who is not his father, the funeral director, and the corpse are included in that total.

It's quiet, because there isn't much to say. It's quick, but no one will admit why. No one cries, but the entire time, Digger's throat is burning, and his nails dig angry red scratches into his palms.

There isn't much left to him.

Just a name. But it's more than enough.

The answer to a question he'd been asking as long as he'd been old enough to understand what it meant.

One that opens a thousand doors and promises him a million possibilities, when he plugs it into a search engine and his eyes bug out at the results.

However, Digger, for the first time in his life, is actually committed to something. He can't exactly jump on a plane and fly across the world the next day, the way he would have years earlier.

But life is short, isn't it? And what he has in the army is nothing compared to what he could have in America.

So he starts to grow his hair out as he makes a plan. 

What follows is quite possibly the most spectacular display of public indecency, drunken splendor and unspeakable actions with a stuffed animal that the state's ever seen. The bar almost down, too, but Digger isn't totally sure if that's his fault or someone else's.

Still, it's really quite something. 

It's also the most fun he's ever had in his life.

They call it mental instability, and in all honesty, setting aside that at least half of this was all premeditated, they're probably right.

As soon as he's tossed out, he drives to the airport.

He takes the first flight to America, with nothing but a handful of papers crumpled in his pockets.

He doesn't look back once. 

 

* * *

 

For a man who's made millions off of masterminding toys for small children, W. W. Wiggins (Real name, poor bastard) sure doesn't seem to like them all that much.

Or maybe, it's just his own child.

Because when Digger steps into his polished office, and says those three magic words _(I'm your son)_ while extending the smoothed birth certificates and photographs he'd been reading over and over on the flight in, he isn't surprised.

He isn't overjoyed.

He isn't even angry.

He just looks Digger in the eye and says, "I know."

There's a stilted conversation that lasts less than ten minutes, in which Digger rattles off a list of vague attributes that describe him, hoping to find some common ground. (Education? _Barely made it through school._ Job? _Had one, but then I blew it up._ Interests? _Drinking, that pony cartoon, and turning kids' toys into weapons. Yeah, I know)_

 And then his father goes back to his work, just as much a stranger to Digger as he was before they'd met.

Once again, he is no one's son, and everyone's inconvenience. 

Digger's first thought should have been to get on the first flight back, to go back, to find a way to try and reconstruct the life he'd destroyed to come here.

Instead, that self-destructive little switch in his brain switches on, and he decides to stick around.

He allows his father to call him George Glass, instead of Digger Harkness, because _Harkness_ reminds him of a mistake he made twenty-five years ago, one he doesn't want to come back any more than it has.

_Oh, fuckin' shame it'd be if anyone finds out y'got a bogan f'r a son, right?_

He allows his father to strand him in a grinding day job that pays as little as possible, where his role is to occupy as little space as possible, until he decides what to do with him.

When he does, it feels less like a promotion, and more like a punishment.

It's a mascot.

He's supposed to be a fucking mascot. For a new line of toy boomerangs that won't even work.

The conclusion his father had made from his newfound relationship (And calling it a _relationship_ is really too much) with his son?

A way to make money. 

The conclusion his father had made from the one thing he's good at?

Something to humiliate him with. Something to drive him away.

Digger's job is to wear what can be best described as a bright blue minidress with a white sash, a hat literally stapled to a fluffy crown of hair that's pinned to his scalp, and tights that make him waddle when he walks. 

He has to stand on a stage in that abomination, and crack a kooky smile, and let children hurl cheap wooden Ls at him for a few hours every day.

He lasts one night.

One night, before he tears the pins out of his hair and starts to reshape toys into a tools, wrapping them carefully with paracord.

He doesn't exactly have a spotless record with anything, let alone impulse control.

So he says, _fuck it,_  drives down to the Gold City bank, and shows his father exactly who he is.

He doesn't even stop to take the costume off.

 

* * *

 

There are dozens of reasons for a person like him to get into this line of work.

Money. Fame. Power. Release. The advancement of an unethical science experiment or two.

Him? He wants a bit of each.

Digger wants the money to buy everything he could never afford, and he doesn't need to sit around and wait for rich men to decide he's worthy of it. 

He wants to be the most famous man in whichever room he's in. To make every head turn, to make every face light up in recognition. Who cares if they start laughing, or scrunch their faces up in disgust? At least they're looking at him.

He wants to control all the things he never could. And then things don't exactly go according to plan, so he settles for snipping the puppet-strings binding him to his father. Which is probably the better of the two, at least in his mind. More satisfying.

He wants to indulge in the meanness that's lurking just beneath his skin, that makes it burn and itch day after day. He wants to let it out before he chokes on it.

He wants to see how many interesting variations on a novelty weapon he can come up with. (By the way: twenty-five and counting.)

But for the most part, he just wants to have some fucking fun.

Which is why, when the tabloids finally commit to a name for him, he doesn't take it too harshly.

Another man, one who hadn't yet flushed his dignity down the drain, would have taken offense to the cartoonish name. 

But then again, his first heist _had_ been in that cheap Halloween costume, so maybe a bit of gaudy flair isn't too far out a suggestion.

Another man, who wants to dominate and terrify, would respond to the dramatic white lettering slapped across the grainy and wholly unflattering photo of his face by screaming in anger, tearing the magazine to shreds, and blowing something up.

But when Digger first sees his new title,  _Captain Boomerang,_ his response is to keel over in a fit of obnoxious laughter that definitely pisses off a neighbor or two.

It's an insult. Meant to poke fun at him, turn him into a ridiculous spectacle. Maybe even shame him straight.

Because as long as he's doing this, they'll never forget that damn costume, even though it had lasted a grand total of ten days before it was in electric blue ribbons, before he'd replaced it with something far more practical. 

Boots he can actually run in. A trench coat lined with dozens of secret pockets he'd sewn himself, to carry everything he could possibly need, and then some. A tracksuit, because he really isn't in the mood for putting _too_ much effort into his looks, even if he _does_ stitch his nickname across the chest. And sure, a few diamond and gold pieces because what thief doesn't keep at least _some_ of the spoils for himself?

Still, he goes about it with an intense sense of frugality, one developed after years spent going to bed on an empty stomach, wearing clothes that shrink and wear through year after year, and always preparing for there to never be enough to go around.

 _Waste nothing,_ his mother had always said. Not exactly to _him,_ but he'd still heard it.

So he wastes nothing.

He wears his boots until they fall apart, and when they do, he fills in the holes with wads of duct tape and carries on. Every time tufts of yellowed down start leaking through the holes in his coat sleeves, he stitches them shut. Even his boomerangs, his pride and joy, are recovered from crime scenes and bought back from eBay, and then crudely sharpened and re-wrapped before they're ready for re-use.

So if the news decides to focus on the costume, he really doesn't mind.

Yes, it's an insult.

But it's something flashy. Something fun. Something theatrical. Something just a bit charming. Something to set him apart from the other criminals-for-hire, and if it's ridiculous, doesn't it just mean he can get the drop on whoever tries to stop him?

Yes, it's an insult.

But what better way to bite back than to adopt it, to wear it across his chest like a badge, to laugh louder than they can, to fall into it and hold it close?

Yes, it's an insult.

But it also means that his father won't forget. Every time his name is repeated in the news, or printed in the tabloids or the paper, he'll see it. And he'll know that a small piece of the blame is entirely his own. 

Captain Boomerang?

Hell yes, he can work with that.

 

* * *

 

Captain Boomerang is a laughingstock for years.

Hardly anyone hires him for a robbery or a smuggling job or a kidnapping or some good ol'-fashioned intimidation.

So for the most part, he does his own work.

He's damn good at it, too, barring a handful of shallow graves containing some impulsive and regrettable decisions that he'll definitely repeat the next time he has one too many.

The rest of the criminals he shares the city with can never seem to get past the name, though. 

Everyone but one man. Someone from his early years, who was just passing through Central City and landed in the same cell block as him, back before he'd thought of breaking into prisons to leave behind escape kits.

They'd hit it off well enough. Mostly because, all things considered, a man who uses rope-fu to make a living really can't call a guy who weaponizes boomerangs a crackpot. 

Even if he _did_ bail on Digger as soon as they'd made it out of prison.

Nothing personal, though. He'd have done the same thing.

Still, he finds the encounter important enough to memorialize it on his arm. No matter how strange everyone thinks Digger is, he now knows there are stranger things out there. That there's someone else out there who has a similar taste in peculiarity. Someone else will arrive soon enough and stick around.

And sure enough, that someone appears. A red streak of light that starts popping up at dozens of thwarted crimes.

No one knows what to make of it at first, but Digger is the first one to seize the opportunity.

When Central City's favorite flash goes whizzing by, strapped to a rocket boomerang (Who knew?), the underworld starts thinking that maybe there's something to his gimmick.

He starts getting hired. More often than not, as insurance, because the red streak, whatever it is, really seems to like kicking his ass. 

And there's something just a bit unfair about it all (Right, because a guy with a boomerang is supposed to stand up against _that._ That sure makes sense), but that's life, isn't it?

And Digger loves a challenge, even when it's unlikely that he'll win any more than some of the time. So the work keeps rolling in, and he keeps coming back for more.

He pours his earnings into partying, but also into special metals and wires, into newer and better boomerang designs he'd never had the time or the money to make before. He throws ideas at the wall, and sees which ones explode, which ones stick, and which ones come back around to bite him before he can catch them.

And he takes care to make it clear that he isn't just for hire. He also likes to do the work for himself.

Because sometimes, Digger just feels like destroying a diamond exchange's polished hallway, and using a mini-Hoover to slurp up it's contents.

And sometimes, it's _really_ nice to have a fall guy all to yourself, he decides as a silver flash clips his partner in the back of the head and he goes down like a sack of rocks.

He kind of expects the blue lightning to burst in behind him. He kind of expects the half-original snarky comment. He kind of expects the supersonic sock to the face from a hipster in a shiny red leotard.

He doesn't expect to wake up in a prison miles outside the radius of the city, or that there's no way for him to escape it. 


	12. wisen him and sharpen him and give him a motto

For the most part, Floyd Lawton goes unseen.

He likes it better this way, he decides, sinking lower in his seat, imagining that sandbags are tied to his joints. Ignoring the way the rectangular shapes of the wads of cash he’d crudely sewn into the inside of his coat jab into his ribs.

He’s close to the door, pressing against the plastic back of the seat until a narrow metallic scratch is left in the dented wall.

Back here, no one will talk to him. No one will see him. No one will comment on the lanky teenager with sunken, red-tinted eyes, a newspaper from a few days ago spread across his lap, and an expensive leather trenchcoat that he has yet to grow into.

And he _will_ grow into it. No doubt about that.

Floyd takes after his father in looks and in his marksmanship. He hopes that’ll be all he inherits.

But it’s too soon to tell.

So he needs this. This weight that the coat carries with it, that makes his back bow.

This heaviness, that will keep his feet planted firmly on the ground and humble him, until his destination arrives.

Every few minutes, he catches himself observing the dark red insides of his eyelids, and he has to bite the tip of his tongue to force himself awake.

_Not yet._

His heart thumps wearily as he stares at the creased newspaper in his hands, at the black and white photograph his thumb has been aimlessly circling for so long that the pad of his finger is stained gray.

Black and white. Of course it is. It would be. Because they want you to think he died decades ago, when the calendar says it’s been three weeks, and his mind says it’s been only seconds.

The picture itself is relatively inoffensive, unlike it’s coloring.

Eddie, beaming brightly at the camera. Eddie, funny and glowing and _alive._

It makes him feel sick.

But it’s better than the text surrounding his photo.

_Hunting accident._

They’re calling it a hunting accident.

They aren’t wrong. Not really.

Eddie had been hunting, and one too-perfect shot had been all it took.

But the story in the paper is all wrong.

Father and sons going deep into the woods with their guns. Two shots fired by mistake. The golden boy dead, the black sheep stumbling out of the treeline with his paralyzed father on his shoulders.

Never mind the blood on the library floor. Or the glass from the shattered window, or the broken bough.

Never mind that none of them were dressed for hunting.

Never mind the smashed lock on the boathouse door.  

Never mind his mother, who’d known exactly when to call. Who hadn’t shed a single tear.

Never mind that his fingerprints are on the murder weapon, and they all know it.

People will believe it. Because his parents will have buried the truth. Because the police don’t care all that much about what rich people do in the dark, not really. Because everyone knows about George Lawton’s safaris, about the menagerie of stuffed animal heads lining his walls. About his prized collection of firearms.

They’ll believe it, and nothing will be done.

He folds the paper shut, tucks it under his arm, and lets his head roll to the window.

The ride is meant to only take a few hours, but it feels like he’s been sitting here for weeks, watching the scenery blur by in a haze of inky black and bright specks of stippled light.

_Yeah, you just had to take the late train. Because you’re definitely not running from anything._

Well, no. He’s not running. No one’s chasing him.

After all, why would they start now?

There was no trial, though they know who pulled the trigger. No prison sentence, though he’d have fallen to his knees and begged them to take him in if they’d called him in for one interview.

Only a small, contained investigation that had ended as quickly as it had begun, and Floyd knows there won’t be anything more than that, because the town he’s leaving named itself after his family, and there’s enough stashed away in his parents’ bottomless bank account to cover what reputation itself won’t.

No divorce, even.

Only a quiet separation of mother and father, because in the end, that their standing has always meant more to them than the boy they’d buried.

George keeps the mansion, and learns to navigate the library’s floors in a wheelchair. Now that the blood’s been scrubbed out of the floorboards, he’s completely numb to the memories that come with the room.

Genevieve, the guest house, where, for all Floyd knows, she spends her days pacing the perimeter, grumbling about her stipend, dreaming up new ways to torture her husband that just won’t involve her sons any longer.

Because one is dead and the other is now gone.

Because it had only taken hours after the final cruiser had made it’s way off the family property for him to run for it.

No. Again. He’s not running. He isn’t even hiding. If they wanted to, they could probably find him quite easily.

 _(Do it,_ he thinks, _Next time I see your face, you’re dead, I swear.)_

It’s just… A breath of fresh air.

That’s what his mind finally decided to label it. A breath of fresh air, so he doesn’t breathe in the poison in his house, so he doesn’t turn into his parents.

The freshest, dirtiest air he can find. The kind of air that’ll make cancer polyps start sprouting in his lungs faster than his brand-new chain-smoking habit can. The kind he can suffocate himself with, if he only sticks his head where the smog is the thickest.

And the filthiest air in the country belongs to Gotham City. A terrible place for a terrible person.

The monstrous city, infested with crime and swollen with corruption. The bloated, bleeding tumor that had burst out of the East Coast, that no one’s found a way to remove yet. That everyone watches warily out of the corner of their eye though they pretend they don’t see it.

There’s a constant space on the nightly news and in all the papers reserved for whatever insanity develops next, so though this will be the first time Floyd set foot in the city limits, he knows quite a bit already.

He’s also fully aware of what his willing emigration to the city is saying about him, because the only people who willingly move to Gotham are death-seekers or predators who don’t have the balls to go after victims that are strong enough to chance at winning when they fight back.

He doesn’t know which he is.

He doesn’t want to.

 

* * *

 

Some time ago, Floyd had read something about bored geniuses. How, supposedly, they go insane if they don’t have something to keep stimulating their minds.

There’s something to that, he thinks.

Floyd isn’t exactly a genius, but he’s damn smart. Or at the least, smart enough to blast through college-level math courses in middle school.

So maybe that’s why he feels so restless.

Floyd had left home before graduating high school. He has no college degree. He’s never worked a day in his life, and up until recently, his grand vision for his life had extended to living off his inheritance. Maybe buying a yacht, filling it up with hot women (mostly for show) and cruising around the Caribbean for forty years while he waits for his parents to finally work up the courage to kill each other.

But then reality had ensued, as he now knows it does. Instead of killing each other, his mother had persuaded one son to do it for her, and the other killed the brother he loved to save the father he hated, because _there has to be a better way._

 _(No,_ he knows now.  _There isn't.)_

And he suddenly was living on a budget of hundred dollar bills he’d taken from his mother’s safe. They’d lasted him around a month after his first, second and third mugging.

(He’d bought a gun after his fourth. When the fifth rolled around he'd left the man in a dumpster with a single clean hole between the eyes. He doesn't think there will be a sixth.)

And for what it’s worth, he really doesn’t want to plug his family name into an ATM and see what happens. He’s still too proud to come crawling back in any form, even if it's just snatching money from his parents' account.

So basically, he’s kind of fucked.

He now has to work, even though the only special skill he really has is shooting things with alarmingly consistent accuracy.

Which doesn’t exactly hurt his chances when he marks it down as a special skill on his resume. After all, he’s looking for work in _Gotham._

He gets hired. That’s never a problem. He’s been a construction worker and a janitor and a security guard and most frequently, an exterminator. But he never lasts more than a handful of months at one place. Not because he isn’t good at it, but because it’s only a matter of time before he just stops clocking in, and finds himself wandering the streets, memorizing the storefronts and the shapes of the buildings, counting the number of narrow alleys he can fit in and manholes to avoid.

It’s just too dull, bouncing aimlessly from one job to the next, moving in and out of shittier and shittier apartments, pulling his pistol on the men who try to hold him up. As much as he wouldn’t mind a bullet to the head, he sure as hell will _not_ go out in some dirty alley strewn with heroin needles with his pockets picked clean. If he’s going to die, it had better be damn impressive. It had better accomplish something.

His situation is below him. He doesn’t belong here, in the worst part of town, where the street reeks of desperation and hopelessness. Where it costs less to burn your apartment to the ground than to keep it standing.

These people he’s surrounded by are below him, rolling around in the filth instead of swimming through it. Dealers in broad daylight, selling to scrawny kids who are just starting puberty. The lizard king’s boys, climbing out of manholes in the middle of the day with backpacks overrun with stolen goods. Pimps roughing up working girls who don't bring in enough money at the end of the night.

He wants to tear his hair out whenever he sees them, because he knows that something has to change, but the cops just roll on by.

But he knows there’s something here for him. Something that had made that first gulp of smoggy air the easiest breath he’s ever taken. Something that had settled deep in his chest when he’d first laid eyes on the skyline, telling him, _this is it. You’re here. You've arrived._

There’s something that he belongs to now, some place within the limits of this city where he fits, but he doesn’t know what it is, or how he's meant to find it.

He’s tried looking for that something everywhere. His jobs sure as hell don’t have it. Neither does the military recruitment station he visits (Visit, in this case, being defined as the act of peeking through the doorway before turning on your heel and sprinting away with your tail between your legs).

He can feel it, humming under the industrial noise clogging the streets as he wanders them, staring up at the rooftops and wondering.

Wondering _what?_

He doesn’t know yet. Just that there's something absolutely vital that he's meant to be doing. Some place he should be. 

But he has no idea what it is until his perpetual joblessness catches up to him, and he’s given the boot from his latest shitty apartment by the business end of the landlord’s shotgun.

Until he stumbles into a church, and curls up unnoticed on a pew in the darkest corner.

Until somewhere after the night has blurred into the following morning, he wakes to a voice, echoing in his mind like the inside of a bell as the resident minister rehearses his sermon for the day. 

This world is wrapped in sticky, hideous darkness, and something has to change, says the minister.

Floyd nods listlessly. He’s known that for a long time. Everyone in this city knows it.

But the sermon goes on, and even though the words are in the wrong order, they melt through his skin and settle in beside his bones. They make him stop. They make him think. They make him realize.

He’s spent so much time wandering around in the dark, that he’s never once considered the light.

It’s there. It is. He can see it now, staring up at the arched ceiling, at the shocked, scattered brilliance that streams in through the stained glass.

It’s there, says the minister, and he agrees.

It’s there, says the minister, and someday, the kindness and softness and forgiveness in it’s nature will penetrate the grime, and form a path for the good to follow.

And Floyd rises to his feet, and storms out of the church, shaking his head, gritting his teeth, harsh red lines streaking the edges of his vision.

 _Liar, liar, liarliarliar_ buzzes along the inside of his ears.

Because no, it fucking _won’t._

Soft and kind and forgiving is too weak to amount to anything. Soft bounces right off the dark without denting it. Kind kills itself the second it touches corruption. Forgiving is pointless, when people choose wrong again and again, and won’t change no matter how much you want them to.

If the light is going to make it all the way down, to slice right through the rot, to touch the people most in need of it, it must be hard and sharp and relentless.

If no one else sees it, fine. He does. He’ll show them.

If no one else will do what needs to be done, fine. He will. He’ll raise this whole city up on his own if he has to. He’ll take that light and burn a path through the filth for those who are worthy to walk it.

Maybe, somewhere along the way, he’ll find his own.

 

* * *

 

_I am the light; the way._

The words are carved on his wrist cannons, embroidered into his collar, tattooed on his arm. 

He won't forget. He _can't_ forget. That's the only thing that separates him from them. 

That and the code he etches into the inside of his mind. A simple and informal one that's only two sentences long.

_Never kill women or children. No exceptions._

(No women, because in this world, most of them have less of a choice than men. Because there's often more to their mistakes than simple cruelty. Because there's a kindness in most of them that doesn't exist in men, and this city needs it if it's going to survive.)

(No children, because they're _children._ Because they're victims of circumstance. Because they don't know any better. Because they're still growing, still capable of change. Because this city needs change, and it _has_ to be for the good.)

(... Yeah, so he could have phrased it better, but it works well enough, doesn't it?)

He knows that he's going to have to cross some lines. Do things that'll disgust him, that'll make him lie awake for hours staring at the wall. 

But never this. As long as that barrier is never broken, he'll know he's never completely lost his way. 

And with that in mind, Deadshot comes to life.

It's immediately clear to him that he must have been born for this. 

That's the only explanation he can come up with, for why this feels so _right._

Why he can see every shot clearly in his mind's eye, like the predetermined punches of a boxing match. Why his aim is flawless. Why the feeling of a gun in his hands is so reassuring now when it had been terrifying a year ago.

Why he feels this strange, ugly sense of relief, like something inside him that's been wound too tight for far too long has finally sprung back into shape. 

Why, up here, on the skyscraper roofs, where the wind whistles around the shapes of the gargoyles to wrap itself around him and guide his bullets to their marks, everything makes sense.

Below him, as unaware of him as they are of God, are the people, streaming through the city streets.

From this distance, the streets look like gutters. The people, like animals.

And here he is, hundreds of floors above, playing exterminator. Separating the vermin from the benign, and setting out to flush them from their nests. 

But he isn't the only man, it seems, who's thought of cleaning up the streets.

There's someone else. A shadow, weaving through the streets, picking off the same targets as him, sometimes only minutes before he can get to them.

Except, he doesn't leave them dead, but strung up, alive and squirming, for the police to collect.

Floyd doesn't know what to think at first. There's just a ragged ball of emotion storming in his mind whenever he thinks of the shape, and there's nothing he can do to ease it.

Annoyance, at his inefficiency and his naivete. What, does he really think they'll change? That a few years in Blackgate will turn them into decent men?

Gratitude, because it's one more man who's seen the light. If there's one, there will be others who are better than him, who are closer to the truth.

Anger, because those are _his_ targets. This is _his_ fight. 

It takes a few months for those feelings to finally settle, around the same time that the shadow receives his name.

And Floyd can't believe what he's seeing, because they like him. They fucking _like_ him, when they'd wanted nothing but to lock Floyd up since the first night he'd started this.

(And _he's_ the one who started it. He doesn't care what anyone says. He's the man who put on a mask and took justice into his own hands first, and he didn't need a cape and sharpened boomerangs to do it.)

The city doesn't want justice. It wants entertainment. It wants a hero who wears a funny costume and plays with gadgets, who leaves his loose ends behind to tangle together. Who lets criminals back onto the street to hurt more people.

The Batman ignites in Floyd a deep, simmering hatred. 

 

* * *

 

To be a successful vigilante, you have to be superhuman, or you have to be rich.

That's the conclusion Floyd is drawing, because he has no power whatsoever, and his wealthy days are long behind him.

Because every night at sundown, Floyd pulls on his mask and hits the streets, and every morning at sunrise, he numbs his fresh bruises with ice from the freezer and sleeps like the dead.

There's simply no time to work. No time to find money, so he starts borrowing.

He has to pay for a roof over his head. For food. For long hours training with the bare-knuckle boxers at the gym. For bullets. For guns. For trips to the emergency room when someone gets the jump on him. 

He digs himself deeper and deeper into debt, until there's a man knocking on the door of his broom-closet-sized apartment every hour.

The days all blur, one into the other, and he really starts to wonder,  _how long can this last?_

This work is draining him. It's sucking him into the darkness like a black hole, and he's powerless to stop it.

He doesn't even know if he wants to.

Why resist, when the Bat has already moved into position to take his place? When the entire city's frothing for a reason to lock him up and throw away the key?

... Why _not,_ when someone as precise as he is has already gathered a following?

Why _not,_ when he can control his descent.

Why _not,_ when, at the end of the day, killing a bad man is still killing a bad man.

He's still not going to be walking around, never going to hurt someone ever again.

Is it really so bad if he gets a reward for it? Doesn't he _deserve_ it? Compensation for his own pain and suffering?

And really, how else can he keep this up? He has no way to provide for himself, for all of this. 

Floyd swallows his dignity and his pride, and takes the offer.

And the next.

And the next.

 

* * *

 

It's hot. Really fucking hot. 

So hot, the asphalt sticks to his work boots when he steps onto the pavement. So hot, he's only been outside a few minutes, and already, his sunglasses are sliding down his nose. So hot, the cross around his neck may as well be branding his chest when it presses into his skin. So hot, he could probably fry an egg on the metal lid of a dumpster.

He screws the eighth and final camera in place, and jogs back to the white pickup before his beard soaks with sweat. Quickly, he checks the angle in the monocle lens of his eyepiece _(Perfect. Of course),_ and then glances in the mirrors, ostensibly, for any passing cars as he backs out, but in reality, for any onlookers who he'd somehow overlooked.

_One last check and... nope. We're good._

The line of homeless men that had been clinging to the shaded walls of the alley are long gone, enjoying the meal ledgers he'd tossed them with the warm,  _Hey, I've been there,_ smile that comes so naturally to him. On a day like this, with a triple-digit temperature, absolutely no wind to be seen, and humidity trapped between the Gotham skyscrapers, he knows for sure that they'll be long gone for the rest of the day.

He doesn't even need the rest of the day. Just a few hours, until the job's done. And the camera's self-incendiary, like the rest, so he doesn't even need to retrieve it.

The thing that no one tells you, when you become an assassin (Not hitman. _Assassin_. Give him a break. He's a step above answering shady Craigslist ads to off someone's spouse. Besides, hitmen get caught. He doesn't): The execution is the least important part of any job. It's the setup that makes you, and the getaway that breaks you. Anyone can show up and shoot, but if you don't have every variable accounted for before you're even on the roof, your success rate drops. If everything isn't absolutely perfect, you could lose millions. Maybe even your whole reputation. If you don't have your getaway predetermined or your alibi established, you'll get caught.

Given that Deadshot-the-assassin (Because Deadshot-the-vigilante is a very different matter. Not that anyone else agrees with him) has been at large for eighteen years so far, and he has yet to miss once, he figures he's got it covered.

Right now, it looks like this damn heat will be the biggest obstacle he'll have to face. The traffic is nothing he can't avoid, once he takes a handful of side-streets to get the truck in place.

The security guards at the Gardner building are nothing. They just pat him down, dissect his toolbox, and wave him by after checking his latest pseudonym off the list, and he lets them do their job. 

The elevator takes him all the way up when he puts his key in the slot, and in the two minutes it takes him to get to the roof, the most he has to do is unzip his coveralls and slap on his armor. He doesn't even need it, given that this is an easy job with practically no risk, and it can only last so long before it starts smelling like an old sock, but he likes it. Makes him feel professional.

The elevator _pings._

Perfect. Again. No one's here but him. All the security cameras have been playing looped footage since his last visit a week ago, and his gun cache is still in the HVAC where he'd left it. Everything is in place. 

The only thing that gives him pause is that damn heat, blasting it's way into the elevator like a punch to the teeth. And even then, he walks through it, and straight to the air conditioning units.

Floyd removes the eyepiece from his mask, peering through it to check as he drops the mask on the HVAC unit next to him.

He'll go without it today, he decides, settling in between two units. He's lasted this long without a mask. He can just slap it on as he leaves.

Floyd peers through the eyepiece, frowning as a spike of tension shoots down his spine.

It's not working. It's not _-There we go._

He hisses through his teeth.

Damn heat wave, fucking with the cameras.  

... Whatever. They're working now. He doesn't have time for this shit. He'll be fine. 

He digs into the toolbox, pulling out a travel-size radio. Floyd juggles his rifle in one arm while he straightens the antenna with his free hand, tuning the radio to his favorite station, and cranking up the volume. Just in case.

(And also, he likes a bit of music while he works)

Then, he slides his hand into his pocket, whips out his phone, and calls his boss-for-the-next-minute.

Angelo. Low-level Maroni. Chain-smoker, like he'd used to be. Real dick. Floyd had done a job for him early on, when he’d been young and new to the hitman business, back when he’d still believed himself to be a hitman.

Back then, he'd been inexperienced. Easy to stiff over once the job was done.

Not anymore.

Floyd Lawton is simply the best marksman there is. He's traveled the world many times over. He's killed in Mexico, Canada, China, England, Qurac, Nairomi, the Soviet Union, every state it had dissolved into, and then some. He's killed mob bosses, cartel kings, generals and serial killers. When his targets are offered to him, he hand-picks them for their character, rather than the figures attached to their heads, because when you're as good as he is, you set your own rates.

And he's good. Damn good. He'd started out the best marksman anyone had ever seen, and he's only gotten better over the years, thanks to the generosity of his growing list of contacts.

 _(People like us, doin' what we do? We gotta stick together,_ David Cain had told him once over drinks. Though Floyd personally disagrees, he has to admit that meeting up once every blue moon to swap tips and vent about caped crusaders does have it's benefits).

So why is he here? Offing some low-level snitch for a price he's long considered beneath him?

Simple: It's local. This is his weekend with Zoe, and the Gotham Academy is right up the road from the courthouse. He's going to surprise her, maybe even take her out for ice cream. Rub how great of a father he is in Michelle's face a bit, because Floyd Lawton above many things, but pettiness is not one of them.

But he needs money for that. So after he loads a single bullet into his rifle, he signs into his bank account, because he's got the sneaking feeling that...

_Yep. Bastard._

_"What?”_ comes a growl from the other end. Angie'll be dropping dead from lung cancer any day now. Not today, though, because of course not.

“Hey, Angelo, this is the exterminator you called for your, uh, _rat problem?"_

Is exterminator the most unlikely job he could have chosen as a cover? No. But it's worked so far, and _if it ain't broke..._

"My account’s lookin’ a little thin. Something wrong here?”

He frowns at the line of zeroes in his total balance.

Zero dollars, exactly.

_How does that even happen?_

Rhetorical question: he knows how that happens.

It’s just the price of being self-employed.

He has to replace all the cameras and deflectors he leaves behind, and modify them to suit his needs. 

He has to pay for the right pieces to make his own bullets. His own guns. His own armor, when it’s damaged beyond repair. 

For excuses and distractions to clear areas and control crowds while he does his work. For plane and hotel tickets. 

For a truck with a blue collar job's sign on the side. For well-tailored uniforms that make him look the part.

For falsified papers that cover not only his many aliases, but where the money comes from so Zoe's school will feel less guilty about admitting her, even though there are dozens of gangster's children sharing a classroom with her. 

For his daughter’s tuition and her mother’s rent and anything they might need or want.

And then there’s still plenty left for him, but Floyd still appreciates the finer things in life. Quality tailoring, expensive dining, nice whiskey, penthouse suites. A decent barber. The occasional high-price escort when the urge hits him once every few months or so.

So at the end of the day, he really does end up cutting it pretty thin. And Michelle, for her many flaws, knows a lot about spending exact amounts.

So... Zero. Exactly. 

Oh, she _would._

_Yeah, Michelle. Love you too._

“No one gets paid until what needs to get done gets done,” Angelo growls.

Nuh-uh. No way. They’re not gonna cut and run on him. Never again.

“Nope," he says, "That’s not the rules. No money, no honey.”

He can hear Angelo break something as he watches the camera feed light up his eyepiece.

A motorcade. Close to a dozen police cars andan armored SUVturn into the courthouse alley.

 _“Whoa,_ here’s your boy, right now.”

The calculation program in his eyepiece begins crunching the geometry in seconds as the snitch's escort _(Marshals, huh? Real classy)_ swarms out and around the SUV, securing the area. 

_Yeah, great job, guys. That's cute. That's definitely gonna work._

“With about, uh, twenty of his new best friends.”

Floyd taps the touchscreen, grimacing as a sweat print is left on the screen.

Nothing. 

“I’m still seein’ zeroes over here, Angie.”

“You shut the hell up and _do your job!”_

Floyd smirks, peering through his scope as the mafia snitch steps out of the armored vehicle, doughnut in one hand, Starbucks in another. He glances nervously around before making the long walk to the courthouse back door.

“And there he goes. Man of the hour," Floyd narrates, "In about thirty seconds, your window is gonna close. Forever.”

_Ping._

Floyd pauses to glance at his smartphone.

From zero to a million, just like that. That easy, the whole time.

_God, what a prick._

_“Okay! "_ Angelo huffs, "Okay, okay, _relax._ There was an accounting error. Is that enough?”

_Hmmm... No._

“Now double it for being a dickhead. You got six seconds.”

Eight, but he doesn’t need to know that.

On the other side of the line, he's pretty sure that Angelo's just thrown his glass at the wall.

“Do you have _any idea_ who you’re playing with?”

Of course he does. He’s dealt with far worse.

“Did you just… Did you just _threaten_ me? ‘Cause this guy’s gonna get a sore throat from all the singing he’s about to do.”

“You _son of a bitch…”_

 _Ping._ Oh, look at that. He can get Zoe that giant doll she’s had her eyes on for months, make rent in his high rise through the end of the year, _and_ invest in a polymer that can withstand intense heat without sweat stains. Win-win.

“Pleasure doin’ business with you, Angie," he smirks, ending the call and shoving the phone in his pocket.

Floyd quickly turns, lines up his sights just so, and lets the bullet fly.

He doesn't bother to watch it as it ricochets from deflector to deflector, straight into his mark's neck. 

Why bother? He's seen it dozens of times. The man will be dead before his doughnut hits the ground. Big whoop.

Besides, he needs to get the hell out of here.

Floyd drops the radio into the toolbox, and begins dismantling his gun _(Oh, yeah, what a waste that was. Get your gun together just to use the damn wrist cannons),_ tossing the pieces hurriedly into the duffel bag and tucking the bullet casing in his pocket. A few of them miss the bag, bouncing off the edge of the zipper and rolling off under the HVAC.

_Shit. There's no time._

_... Well, what are the odds?_

Floyd quickly slips on his mask, and readies the length of rope at his side.

This is the biggest unknown. His vantage point is well-hidden, as is his getaway truck, but someone could see him scaling this building. 

But there's no quicker way down, and he can hear the sirens whining already.

Right now, he knows, there's a building that SWAT is storming. Thanks to the number of ricochets his bullet endured, the police are off by nearly a block.

But he needs to get out while he's ahead.

Floyd snatches the duffel, and takes a running leap over the edge of the roof, sending a line flying to snatch the edge of the neon-yellow railing as he scales the building.

Right into his pickup, where it had been patiently waiting for just this moment.

He rolls himself under a tarp, and hurriedly wiggles loose of his mask and armor, peeling off the sweaty second skin and shuffling into another pair of coveralls.

And then Floyd Lawton, simple elevator repairman enjoying his break, hops out of the bed of his pickup, and pulls into the ongoing traffic. 

_What am I doing here, officer? Oh, just picking my daughter up from school._

 

* * *

 

It took the GCPD five years to get enough of a profile on Deadshot to establish a suspect list.

It takes the GCPD five hours to find CCTV footage of a man in a white mask scaling down the side of the Gardner building.

It takes the GCPD five days to realize that the chaos of the shooting isn't visible on any of said building's security camera footage.

It takes the GCPD five weeks to find a single fragment of a disassembled firearm buried in the gravel of said building's roof.

It takes the GCPD five months to match the fingerprints to a set taken in 1996. A teenage boy from upstate New York.

It takes Amanda Waller five minutes to convince the Commissioner to sit on the information, and wait for the right moment to strike.

It takes him five seconds to give her a direct line to the Bat. 


	13. i'll never be the same

The narrow apartment is sagging under the weight of it’s own quiet desperation, and the woman who leans in the doorway wears it like a queen would a crown.

She’s shorter than him, but somehow, she's found a way to look down at him through puffy, pinkish eyelids. 

She's sharp, all the bones in her body jutting out like razor blades. Vicious, but also graceful. All that extra weight she’d gained is disappearing fast, but he knows that if a hurricane were to chew it’s way through the building’s walls and bear down on her, she would remain exactly where she was standing. Not because she's strong. Not even because she's stubborn.

Michelle Torres is survival in all it’s tattered, quiet glory, staring at him with dark, dark eyes that burn like angry stars. Eyes so dark that he can see himself reflected in them. Dark eyes that search darker corners, patiently waiting for the worst to step out of the shadows and approach her. Eyes that betray nothing except a constant, wolfish hunger for anything and everything.

She's beautiful, in the same way a thunderstorm at midnight is beautiful.

Floyd doesn’t want to look at her.

So he observes the way her threadbare black bathrobe slips off one narrow, dark brown shoulder. The way the dingy lights in the hall somehow make the blotchy pink flowers embroidered on it even uglier than they already are. The way her collarbones draw a sharp line across her chest, one that could slice him wide open if he gets too close.

There’s something just below that line, something in her arms.

It’s why he’s here.

Why he’s doing something he’s never done with anyone before. Why he’s here, staring down at this woman again, when they’d only known each other for a single night months ago, and then parted ways as soon as she'd counted the money he placed on her dresser.

 _It’s a trick,_ he’d told himself the entire flight over. _She’s lying. It’s a trap._

It isn’t. Because everything she’d promised him in her brief email is here, and nothing else.

The gun at his side, the just-in-case-gun that she’s been glancing at every few seconds, is pointless. There’s no danger here.

Even though he’s in the Triangle, which is by far the shittiest neighborhood in Star City, there’s no danger here.

Even though he’s _Deadshot,_ there’s no danger here.

Just the possibility that what’s in her arms isn’t his, even though the time is right. Even though she’d told him he’d pay her enough to avoid seeing anyone for a few weeks, because a few weeks might be all-

“Look at her.”

Three words, hissed by a sharp woman in a sharp whisper through bared, sharp teeth. Because she knows what this means for the both of them.

Three words, wound tight as a rubber band before it snaps. Because she knows that what he does next is going to say more than any words ever could.

Three words: Look. At. Her. Because she is testing him.

He looks at her.

At the tiny person cocooned in a plum-colored blanket, being offered for him to see, but not to hold. Not yet.

At the dark, buggy little eyes that blink slowly, placidly back at him.

At the shriveled, scrunched-up little red-brown face that looks more like an angry walnut than it does a baby.

Immediately, he decides that he loves her.

It must show, because something rolls through Michelle’s shoulders, and she draws the baby back into her arms.

“Her name is Zoe,” she says, and he knows he’s passed.

Now, he crosses the threshold, and sits in one of the mismatched chairs at her tiny kitchen table as she perches on the edge of the other, toes tapping a quiet rhythm on the tile beneath her feet.

Now, there’s a small, squirming weight in his arms, and he’s absorbed in the extremely important task of convincing the baby—  _his_ baby— to wrap her tiny, monkey-like fingers around one of his own.

Now, she leans in towards him and Floyd draws a deep breath and swells, ready for the question. The I-need-money-to-raise-your-kid-for-you question. The question he’s been waiting for since he’d finished reading that email.

Instead, she says, “She’s an accident.”

The words are barbed and hardened. Armor, polished and ready for battle. An assumption she's been preparing to shield herself from since the second she'd peered at him through the crack in the door.

An assumption that he'd made, that he bites the inside of his cheek at.

An assumption that she seems very used to deflecting.

She wouldn’t have planned to have a child, she explains. Not like this. Not where she is now. Because she knows what she is and what her life means for anyone depending on her. Because things aren’t great. They’re not even good. She’s never allowed herself to think otherwise.

But they’re not _so_ terrible that, when she’d stared, terrified, into a toilet bowl, that she’d decided Zoe would be better off never coming to be.

And besides. Zoe was something that, up until right now, was all _hers._ Something the world, in all it’s cruelness, was frothing at the idea of denying her of. Something that was going to be good and bright and wonderful, without any strings attached. 

And so, as soon as Michelle had learned that she might exist, as soon as she knew that she could keep Zoe alive, she’d wanted her.

Selfishly, viscerally, ferociously, she had wanted her.

And so she’d had her. Damn the consequences. Let her have one tiny little light, all her own.

Floyd understands that. He does.

And he respects her for knowing that it wouldn’t be simple. That it was going to challenge her like nothing in the world had. That she’d gone into this with her eyes wide open.

She’d known that she was young. That there was no family for her to go to for help. That even though she’d switched from working the corner to choosing her clients online, the work was still dangerous. That more than just poverty was going to put them both at risk.

So she’d gotten to work. Michelle had read every book and article on pregnancy she could get her hands on. She’d taken every job interview she could find, and eventually, one or two panned out. She flushed all the white powder in her apartment down the toilet. She cut ties with anyone and everyone who might hurt them, which may as well be everyone she knows.

She's gone through hell for this, but the demons aren't done with her yet.

He can see it, etched in lines around her eyes that are appearing decades too early. In the dark, purple-y shadows beneath them. In the slight quiver of her hand as it traces the battered edge of the table, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

The wet, squishy chewing of Zoe’s gums as she investigates his thumb give him an excuse to look away.

He takes it.

"But that doesn’t matter," she says, swelling, "Because I _did it._ I had her, all on my own. She was all mine, and—"

He waits, as a silent laugh coughs it's way up from her chest.

"—And as it turns out," she continues, "Parenting is _hard."_

From her tone, he can tell that it was much harder than she could have ever imagined.

"It's not for everyone," he replies, and it's the truth.

It’s not something that everyone is cut out for. Most people, probably. But definitely not everyone.

He thinks of his parents, and his hands feel cold.

He thinks of children he’s seen wandering the streets, who weren’t born there, but were discarded like broken toys on a stoop, waiting for them to become someone else’s problem.

Of children who left home and never returned, because they looked at the streets and all it’s hazards, and knew it would be better than the place they were leaving behind.

Parenting is hard. But parenting in poverty, especially parenting in poverty _alone_ is something else completely.

Floyd’s only recently become acquainted with poverty. He wasn’t born into it, and he certainly isn’t trapped in it now, but he remembers.

Because poverty is working and working and working until your bones crumble. Clinging to shreds of hope that disintegrate the second they touch your fingers, because that hope isn’t meant for you anyway. Doing things that gnaw away at the edges of your soul, because of the simple and universal need to _get the hell out of here._ Not that most people ever do.

Trying to bring a kid up in the middle of all of that... That’s something he only knows about from scraps of conversation with some of the men and women he’d worked with and lived beside, back before he’d started taking money for bullets spent.

You can do everything right, and still watch your children grow up as quickly as they possibly can, so they can carry their own share of the weight. More often than not, you watch the streets lay open and inviting, and swallow them bit by bit, and you can only watch, because children grow up into people, and people have to make their own choices. And if all the choices given to them are terrible, well, what can you do? What can anyone do?

He can tell, immediately, that Michelle had been one of those children. That she’s been carrying responsibility on her shoulders since she was far too young to bear the weight. That now that she has one of her own, she’s going to do whatever it takes to keep Zoe from falling into the same trap she did.

That, despite everything that says otherwise, she still believes that she can do it.

That, even if she fights like hell, Zoe will also grow up quickly, because that’s just how this works.

“Parenting,” she says, “is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

Even though her words are steady and her face is stone-like, that hand clasped on the edge of the table keeps shaking, and he knows she’s terrified.

But nothing in the world will convince her to give it up. 

She did not ask him to come here to take her daughter away from her. That’s clear.

And honestly, he doesn’t think he wants to, doesn’t think he has a _right_ to. Zoe is more hers than his. Sure, they both had an equal share in her making, but up until right now, that’s been all he's done. Michelle is the one who’d carried her for most of a year. Michelle is the one who uprooted her life and tore it to pieces, and then remade it as well as she could. Michelle is the one who’d summoned the courage to call a hitman she’d slept with once and trust that he wouldn’t hurt her or the newborn in her arms.

(He won’t. He never will. But not everyone she knows is like him. And he’s nearly a complete stranger to her.)

No. He has no right to take her away.

So. Back to his first assumption, then.

He keeps it blunt: “You need money?”

 _“No!”_ she snarls, becoming a wild thing for less then a second as she lunges across the table, casting a shadow across the baby in Floyd's arms.

And then, she remembers who it is that’s sitting in between them. Who it is that’s processing everything that’s happening. Thinking simple baby thoughts about why her mother is getting ready to draw blood.

Michelle slides back into her chair, crosses her arms, and claws at the insides of her elbows with those spindly, shaky fingers.

“I didn’t want you to come here for _that,”_ she hisses, _“I don’t need it.”_

Yes she does. He can see it, in the way that the mustard-colored wallpaper peels downwards like an old lizard’s skin shedding, In the irregular cracks of cheap linoleum tile that he can feel beneath his boots. In the muffled arguments he can hear above and around them. In the cheap, sputtering light that washes her face out and makes it look lean and hungry, like a coyote’s.

He looks away, focuses on the fuzz of dark hair that’s already sprouting from Zoe’s head.

“I don’t even want _you,”_ she hisses, and this time it’s only half a lie, “I just want… _Here.”_

She stops, slides a weathered notepad and a ballpoint pen across the table towards him. They’ve been sitting right here this entire time, and Floyd hasn’t noticed until now.

“I just…” She pauses, searches for the words, then settles on them.

“I want you to get me in touch with her grandmother. That’s all I-”

No.

_No. Absolutely fucking not._

He’ll _never_ do that.

He says as much, the words a rumble in the pit of his chest, and she frowns.

Her gaze slices right through his skin, and _searches._

As she does, he counts the worry lines in her forehead, and starts thinking about another option for the both of them.

Because she needs the money. That’s obvious.

But she won’t take it. Not from him. Not like this.

 _Short,_ is what she calls it, when he offers it to her, this time with a kinder voice.

(Not _poor._ Don’t you fucking dare call her poor.)

She’s just _short_ of the money she needs to take care of Zoe, but she’ll find it.

He knows she will.

But he also knows something that she might not. That money isn’t going to be enough. That Michelle needs help in many ways that aren’t money, but there’s only one of them that he’s willing to provide. Only one of them that he knows he’s capable of giving.

Zoe is more hers than his, and Floyd has only known her for the better part of an hour, but he’s never wanted anything or anyone more in his life. He’s ready to spend the rest of his life bridging that distance.

And he’s always liked kids. 

Even when he was hardly more than a teenager, when he’d just designed his first monocle lens, when he’d been Deadshot for no more than a few weeks, he’d always find himself watching them, because he’d just by existing in the same space as them, he is responsible for keeping them safe. They make him feel younger. They’re honest, even when they don’t mean to be. They’re innocent, usually, but if they aren’t, it’s never their fault. They don’t care where you come from, or what you do for a living. Just that you’re interesting and a good sport. They’re little hurricanes of fun and happiness and laughter, messily crashing into one another and everything in their paths. Careless, but not in a malevolent way. Not until later. Not until the world ruins them, somewhere along the way.

Not until the world chews them up and spits them out, just like he and Michelle had been.

A careful, but firm tugging on his arms. A weight, being removed.

She’s taking Zoe back.

He looks at her. At the puffy eyelids, fluttering low as she lifts her baby back into her arms and gently rocks her to sleep. At the way she carefully shifts her weight when she takes five steps over to her bed, and sets Zoe down. At the tense curl of her lip. At the lines that shouldn’t be there yet. At the sharpness of her wiry body.

 _“Look at me,”_   he says, and those dark, dark eyes roll back up to meet him. 

They harden. Ready for a threat, an insult. Ready to sink her teeth in and fight.

Floyd leans forward, and lowers his voice, like he’s about to tell her something dangerous. Maybe it is, but it’s the best option he can think of.

“Leave with me,” he says, “Right now. We’ll be on the first plane back to Gotham. First class seats.”

She looks at him. Long and hard.

Floyd knows what she sees.

He’s a criminal. He’s a killer. He’s walking down a dark, dark path that isn’t going to end well, and he doesn’t care all that much about when it does.

But he’s going to be the best goddamn father anyone’s ever seen.

And that's enough, because she nods, and pulls her ratty suitcase out from under the bed.

“Give me ten minutes,” she says.

It takes her five.

And then they're gone.

 

* * *

 

There’s no wedding. No honeymoon. No ceremony. Just a simple swish of a fountain pen on a dotted line, and they walk out of the courthouse as husband and wife.

It’s quiet, and it’s quick. No need for unnecessary attention. No need to turn this into something that it isn’t.

It doesn’t stop their witness from staring after them with an expression that can be best described as _bewildered._

“Look at that,” he says to no one particular, gaping down the street at the man in the aged leather trenchcoat and the woman in the mink coat that’s been hers for all of an hour, and the distance between them that isn’t broken by the clasping of hands or the leaning of head on shoulder, but the crossing of arms as a baby is passed back and forth between the two.

Look at that, because it’s something to see. Something that isn't sad, but amusing, in it's own twisted way.

Look at that, because something isn’t right here, and maybe they don’t see it yet, but they will.

“Look at this,” Floyd says, showing the skyline to Zoe as Michelle stalks the upstairs of the sixth luxury apartment they’ve looked at today.

This is the one, they both know. But she’s making her final rounds. Just in case.

This is the one with the view of the skyline spilling out beneath them. This is the one with bulletproof windows, because they live in a nice apartment in Gotham City, and they're an investment worth making, if it means Robin won't keep smashing through your windows. This is the one with the best security in town, because he’ll be back to work soon. This is the one with three separate bedrooms that are all roughly the same size.

Because even though they’ll be raising Zoe together, they won’t lie to her. They’re married now, but there’s nothing romantic about it. Better to be up front about it than constantly pretending, because at some point, she’ll figure it out, and it’d probably be less emotionally traumatizing for her to just always know.

The love between them is the love they share for her, and that’s enough for them to create the common ground they’ll need to raise her.

Because they’ve devoted themselves to raising a kid that won’t have to recover from her childhood, and she’d be better off with both parents under the same roof than living under different ones. Because parenting, as it turns out, is fucking _hard,_ but as hard as it is, it would have been much harder for one of them to go it alone. Because parenting, as it turns out, is a lot of guesswork, and a lot of hoping that your decisions won’t screw your kid up _too_ much down the line.

Because babies, as far as babies go, are pretty simple. Delicate, but simple. Feed them, burp them, wipe them, play peek-a-boo, give them a bath, put them to sleep. Rinse and repeat.

So, at least in the beginning, things are almost friendly between them. They’re not in love. They’re not even friends. They don’t even like each other all that much, and there’s too much between them that’s going unsaid, that neither of them is willing to reach.

But it’s 3:58 in the morning and they’ve been up for two days desperately trying to figure out why Zoe just _won’t. Stop. Crying._  And Floyd just watched Michelle shamble corpse-like into the kitchen and pour vodka in her coffee like it’s the most normal thing in the world, and he’s been staring at the baby monitor whispering, “What do you even _want?”_ under his breath for the past forty-five minutes.

So, at least while she’s in diapers, they get along pretty well. They're too tired to do much else.

All that matters is that their daughter is going to grow up with all the love they never had.

She’ll have all the opportunities Floyd had grown up with and Michelle had been denied.

On that, at least, they agree.

(On that, at least, he’ll admit to himself that Michelle’s intentions are just a bit nobler than his.)  

So Zoe gets it.

The best clothes money can buy. The best apartment in the city. The best school in Gotham, ready for her to enroll when she’s old enough. The biggest goddamn teddy bear in the toy store.

For a while, it looks like they’ve got it figured out.

And then Zoe stomps her way over that blurry border between baby and kid, and it’s like he’s dealing with someone completely different.

Baby Zoe was a plump little thing, with a fuzzy head, constantly demanding their attention.

Kid Zoe is a slight, birdlike girl with a poof of thick, black hair, who’s always quiet, always watching everything with a maturity that doesn’t seem quite right for her age.

It happens so quickly, and it scares him.

Because kids have all the thoughts and wants and feelings of adults, but not enough knowledge or patience or experience to know what to do with them. That’s what parents are for. That’s what he and Michelle are for.

That’s where he and Michelle differ. Where the empty space that’s always occupied their relationship begins to twist itself around all the things they don’t have in common, and makes them keep colliding with one another.

While he wants Zoe to be treated like a princess, Michelle wants her to be realistic.

As soon as she’s old enough, Zoe starts to learn to dress herself. To tie her own shoes. To memorize the route from school to home even though she’s driven there every day. What foods are and aren’t going to cause a problem, even though nothing in their home is going to mess with her lactose intolerance. Who her friends’ parents are, where they live, and what exactly they do, things that she repeats to her parents when she comes home.

Maybe Michelle's just teaching her to stand on her own two feet. Maybe Michelle just doesn’t want to raise a brat. Maybe Michelle's just making sure that, if all this money disappears, Zoe will know what to do with herself. Maybe there’s something completely reasonable about the way she’s acting. Maybe he’s just projecting what he knows about mothers and ulterior motives from the way he’s been raised onto a woman who hasn’t done anything to deserve it.

(Still, he doesn’t like it.)

As soon as she’s old enough, Zoe learns how to lie. How to say, “My daddy works all over the world, so he’s gone a lot,” without understanding what that really means. And he’s grateful, he is. Because she shouldn’t know. Because if she does, she might start looking at him the way Michelle does.

The way she’s looked at him when they’d met years ago, with those dark, dark eyes.

The way she’d peeled away all those layers of falseness, and instantly knew him for what he was.

“You kill people,” she’d said, before she’d let him in. Not a question, but a statement of fact.

Not, _you killed someone._

Because _you-killed-someone_ is forgivable. Because sometimes, the only thing you really _can_ do is kill someone. Because _you-killed-someone_ is in the past. It’s over and done with, and most of the time, people who’ve killed someone won’t do it again.

That is not who he is. That is not what he does.

Present tense: _you-kill-people._ Not, _you did it once a long time ago._ Not, you’re _going to do it._

You do it. That’s how you make a living. You kill people, even though you don’t have to, and you pretend you’re being merciful because it’s just a single shot to the head. Because they don’t feel anything. Because the people you kill are _so_ much worse than you are. Because you’re crusading for some cause you’ve lost sight of nearly a decade ago.

She’d known it immediately. She’d hated it immediately. He can still see it, that same disgust in the bitter curl of her lip and the way her perfect eyebrows twist when he walks through the door after a job well done.

He doesn’t want to see that look on Zoe’s face.

He wants her to think that he’s anything but what he is, because maybe if she learns the truth, she’ll decide he’s undeserving of her love, and he won’t know what to do without it.

Still, it bothers him.

It bothers him, not because Michelle is lying, and having their daughter perpetuate that lie, but because she seems to be preparing her for something that he doesn’t see coming.  

It bothers him, because it makes him wonder how long they’re going to last together.

Because something is changing between them. The forced camaraderie they’d had when they’d been exhausted and keeping up with the demands of a baby is gone now.

Now, he can look at Michelle, at the way she puts on the skin of a woman who’s had money her whole life and knows exactly what to do with it, and see that it doesn’t fit right at all. It bunches up at the joints, where the edges she’d honed before he’d known her cut through. It sags in places it should be tight, and it itches because she knows that it's blood money she's wearing.

He can see it, that she doesn’t fit in with the high-class world they’ve inserted themselves into.

Everyone else can too.

She knows it, but she doesn’t care.

 _Look at me,_ she says, in the way she struts like a lioness, through the crowd of some nice party she’d been invited to out of politeness that she won’t be returning.

 _Look at me,_ she says, wearing blood money like a queen would a crown.

 _Look at me,_ she says, with her chin held high and her ferocious gaze burning holes in anyone brave enough to try.

_Look at me and tell me I don’t belong here._

They look at her.

But no one speaks. Even him.

He doesn’t know if he wants to hate her for causing a scene. He doesn't know if he wants to admire her for the way she lets the glares and the whispers bounce off her exoskeleton, as she walks straight to the champagne and slides the most expensive bottle up her coat sleeve.

He knows that he envies her, for the way she leaves without saying a word or raising a fist.

That’s all there is to it, he thinks. She just can’t fit in with all the people she’s surrounded by, and she doesn’t want to.

He doesn’t think about the shadows that are still following her. About how just having a baby and moving to another city might not be enough to break a habit. About the problems that have been with her for years that she’s never been able to address, that, now that she can, she doesn’t know where to start with.

About how, maybe, she needs his help in a way that isn’t just dropping a million or two into the bank account a few times a month, or taking Zoe to the park while she’s sleeping in. About how, maybe, being alone isn’t something she likes all that much. About how, maybe, she needs more love than her daughter can provide.

About how, maybe, the existence of her flaws makes him feel better about his own.

Instead, he focuses on the bitter curl of her lip, the way her perfect eyebrows twist, the burning in her eyes.

Instead, he looks at her, and pretends he likes what he sees.

 

* * *

 

Floyd should have been waiting for this since the second they’d moved in together. He should have seen this coming. He should have known it was inevitable.

She definitely did.

That, if nothing else, he knows for sure.

She’d stared at that wide expanse that’s always existed between them, and known. She’d listened to all the things they’d never said to each other, and known that this wasn’t going to work. That something was going to give, sooner or later.

Floyd didn’t. Because of course he didn’t. Because he doesn’t think about that when he isn't getting ready to put a bullet through a man's skull, does he? 

Because he thinks, _I know what I’m doing, I know what I want,_ and he never looks at reality. At all the things that will go wrong along the way.

Because they will. They do.

Because the reason why they live the way they do is because he puts on a mask and kills people. And the way he can do that without getting caught is by going everywhere in the world to do it. To stay away for weeks or even months, because if he’s going to keep doing this, he’s going to require time to plan and to escape.

Because when he _is_ home, his attention is always on Zoe.

Because whenever Michelle says, _look at me,_ he never really does.

Look at her.

Look at her, in her beautiful gilded dresses, crashing in at three in the morning, wild-eyed and with the scent of smoke caught in her hair and her heels in her hands, with her dark lipstick smudged down her jaw and her nose itching constantly.

"Oh, _baby,"_ she sighs whenever she realizes Zoe's watching, "Don't look at me."

She doesn't listen.

Floyd did, the one time he'd been around to hear it.

He didn’t think about what it meant, not really.

As far as he was concerned, her behavior was fairly easy to excuse. Still is, in a way.

(But it isn’t forgivable. There’s only so much carelessness and irresponsibility that he can dismiss as benign.)

Michelle Torres was a child who grew up all at once. It’s not her fault that she’s free from worrying about her own survival- or even Zoe’s, now that she’s living in luxury and wearing good clothes, and going to elementary school with the children of the city’s elite.

She’s free. Free to indulge in all the fun that she’d been denied when she was younger. Now that money is a constant, she can spend it.

So she indulges in all the things she never could, without the discipline Floyd knows will take years of exhaustive effort to develop.

So she swings back and forth over the line, not out of any desire to cause harm, but because she simply can’t help it. Because she simply can’t stop herself.

Can’t stop herself from falling, falling, falling back into old habits.

He has a responsibility to reach out and catch her.

But he doesn’t.

 _She’s supposed to be the moral one,_ he thinks.

Never mind that maybe it’s unfair, to ask someone to take on a role they aren’t prepared for. A role that they’ve been raised to reject if they want to live.

 _She’s supposed to be the better of us,_ he thinks.

Never mind that she still is, that for all her flaws, she has never once killed a man. That, for some reason, he still doesn't think she is, because if he thinks otherwise, he'll have to come to terms with what it is that he does. That he's gone so often, that she may well be, and he just doesn't see it.

 _She’s supposed to have it under control,_ he thinks.

Never mind that she's not him. That she doesn’t have her two worlds as neatly separated and compartmentalized as he does.

Never mind that she hates him for how perfectly he has his world divided. That she watches the way the hitman disappears when he walks in the door, and the perfect father emerges, and she tries and tries and tries, but she _just. Can’t._

Never mind that she _is_ trying. That her habit is more like an addiction, and that she’s fighting to keep the worst of it concealed from a daughter who’s too perceptive for her own good.

And maybe, he can understand that just a bit, but nicotine withdrawal is, without a doubt, much easier to endure than cocaine withdrawal. And Floyd isn’t even free of his cigarettes. Not really. These days, he considers it a victory that he only smokes when one’s offered to him, that he never does it at home or near Zoe.

But still. He doesn’t reach out. Doesn’t stop her from falling. Doesn't want to think too hard about why he looks away.

He only looks out of the corner of his eye, just enough to know she’s slipping, but not enough for her to see him watching.

And in the peripheral of her vision, where she exists more often than not, he sometimes sees the ghost of his still-living mother beginning to take form in her, even though he knows that’s not quite right.

No. Because Michelle is not his mother. Her dysfunction is entirely her own. 

And he’ll never be his father. He’ll never hurt either of them.

Neither of them will ever be as terrible as his parents. 

But there _is_ something uncomfortably similar in how they’ve ended up, Floyd decides as he stares at the smooth paint of the ceiling, waiting for her to come home and find what he’s left for her on the table where she drops her coat every time she stumbles in.

Because _he’s_ his mother. _He’s_ the distant one, even though his distance is more physical than emotional.

It took some time, but sure enough, she became the shadow of his father.

The adulterer, technically. Although Floyd doesn’t think the word fits quite right with what she’s doing, because there isn't really anything for her to cheat on. All she's doing is looking for something that he won't give her, and as much as he wants to, he really can't blame her for that.

And if the scene he’d stumbled across earlier tonight is any indication, it looks like she’s found it.

The image is seared on the insides of his eyelids, passing like slides on a projector, even though it doesn’t have any right to.

Michelle, walking in the rain.

Michelle, holding hands with a man he doesn’t know.

Michelle, stopping, turning and folding into him with a softness he didn't know she could possess.

Michelle, catching the amber light of the street lamps and reflecting it back in the shape of her face, turning her skin gold and luminous.

Michelle, smiling in a way that makes her look decades younger, dark eyes bright and full of stars.

Michelle, _happy,_ in a way he knows he won't make her.

It's cruel, what he's doing, and after all that he's let her get away with, it feels hollow, that _this,_ of all things is what's going to finally send them drifting. And it's going to make things difficult for all of them. He and she and Zoe.

But it's time. They can't carry on like this anymore, and if she won't be the one to break it, he will.

There's an interruption in the narrow bar of yellow light shining under his door.

A shuffling sound. Papers slid under the door, ten minutes after he'd heard her come crashing in again. Ten minutes after she'd found them.

He doesn't have to get up to know that she's signed them in no more than five.

Floyd stares at the two slim blots of shadow that interrupt the light, and then they're gone. 

 

* * *

 

There’s something about the snow. Something that just makes the rest of the world seem... softer.

Like there’s more distance between them and everyone else. Like they’re walking through the center of an hourglass, and time itself is coming undone somewhere in between the white swirls that keep flowing.

Like forever is stretching itself longer, just for them.

Even though the cold, sharp wind is licking his ears numb, and the storefronts are exploding with expensive Christmas displays, it's a beautiful night.

Even though the flashing multicolored lights sting his eyes, he can’t deny that he kind of likes it. Even though his arms are starting to ache from the strain of dozens of early Christmas presents.

Still, he’s careful to keep his eyes open. Careful to remember that some of the weight gathered at his forearms is because of his wrist cannons, snugly hidden under the sleeves of his father’s coat.

Just in case, because they live in Gotham, and he’s not taking any chances.

Just in case, because the Joker’s getting crazier now that his girl isn't around to hold him back, and the whole city’s holding its breath, waiting for the punchline, and he doesn't feel quite right going out with only his pistol these days.

Just in case, because something feels a little _off_ tonight, and Floyd doesn’t quite— 

"You should talk to Mama more," Zoe lectures, her ponytail bobbing in tune with her footsteps.

Right. Sure. That'll go well.

Zoe looks up at him, pursing her lips, perfect eyebrows furrowed. Dark, dark eyes, slicing right through his skin to what he really is.

God, she's always been so _serious_ about everything. 

God, she looks so much like her mother.

"Yeah, yeah," Floyd responds, fuming just a bit at how she sounds more like a parent than he does right now, "I know."

It won't be enough for her. That's clear the second the words tumble out of his mouth.

"Mama stays in bed a lot," she comments carefully.

Carefully, because she wants him to think that she's just making conversation. But he's her father. He knows what she's trying to tell him.

"She still going out at night?"

 _"Dad,"_ Zoe sighs, "It's okay. I can take care of her. I know how to make pancakes now and—"

And there it is: the fucking trap. Growing up too quickly, taking on too much too soon.

The trap he and Michelle had worked so hard to keep Zoe from falling into. 

Well, if she's given up on it, he sure as hell won't.

"Hey, babe," Floyd interrupts, _"That's beautiful._ But, uh..."

_That's beautiful. You're beautiful. You're so beautiful and I'm so proud of you. But you can't do that._

He stops, bending down so her dark, dark eyes are level with his own.

_Look at me._

"She's supposed to be taking care of _you,"_ he says, "Y'know? That's how it's supposed to work."

That's how it's supposed to work. That's what parents are supposed to do for their children.

But that's not always how it happens. Because life doesn't listen to the way things are _supposed_ to turn out.

Because Michelle is _supposed_ to have put all of what she'd been behind her when Zoe had come along.  Because Floyd is _supposed_ to be a hero.  Because they're _supposed_ to be _together,_ supposed to be taking care of Zoe _together._

Clearly, that hasn't happened, and it never will.

So he says this: "I want you to come live with me. Alright?"

Zoe is more his than hers. Sure, she'd had her. Sure, she'd destroyed everything she knew to bring her into the world and to keep her alive. Sure, she'd torn herself to pieces to keep her safe, and sure, she hasn't quite pulled herself together. Sure, she _tried._

But she failed. And now it's up to Floyd to pick up the pieces.

"I came into some resources," he explains, "I'll get us a spot. It's gonna be nice, alright? I promise."

Zoe looks at him.

"Mama says I can't live with you 'cause you kill people."

It's matter-of-fact. Something she's known for some time. Something she's come to terms with.

Something she never, _never_ should have known.

_Something Michelle never should have-_

"Now that's not true," Floyd deflects, "That's a _lie!_ She's _lying_ to you— "

 _"Daddy,"_ Zoe urges, rolling his palm between her small brown hands, "I know you do bad things."

_She knows. She knows. She knows._

Here it is, here it comes. Here comes the disgust in the bitter curl of her lip and the twisting of her perfect eyebrows and the burning in her dark, dark-

"But you don't need to worry, okay? I still love you."

She still loves him. _She still loves him,_ but he doesn't deserve it. He doesn't deserve _her._ Not at all.

He looks away.

Something dark flashes on the rooftop, something fluid and almost inhuman that sends a chill down his spine.

They've been out in the open too long. And something feels a little off tonight.

Floyd straightens, guides his under his arm, and mumbles, "Come on."

 Come on, into the alleyway, because there's no one there. Because he doesn't want to be out on the street too long and their car is on the other side of the block. Because no one can hurt her, because he's right here.

Their feet squish in the grayish slush collecting in the gutters, and Floyd cringes at the wet, visceral sound.

The swish of the wind sounds, for just a second, a bit different. A bit heavier.

_Wait—_

There's a vise grip on his shoulder, and the world is spinning, and now he's being lifted by his collar and his toes are dragging in the slush and— 

And it's the fucking Bat with his beady little eyes, calling him by a name his daughter should never know in the metallic growl of a demon.

His daughter. Where— _there._

Backing up, eyes wide and gleaming, shaking like a leaf.

"I don't want to do this in front of your daughter."

 _Then why are you doing it, then?_ He wants to say, but instead, muscle memory takes over, and he draws his pistol.

And then he's flying, skidding on his back across the alley, feeling the bruise settle in. 

And then he's firing, watching sparks skid off the black smear adorning the Bat's chest because _of course it's fucking bulletproof._

And then he's losing, as his leg sits uselessly beneath him and snow has slithered under his shirt and he can already feel the bruises forming, and he can already hear the sirens whining closer and closer.

But Floyd doesn't listen to his body, to the situation he's found himself in, to the reality of how this is going to go, because of course he doesn't.

All he can see is red, red, red, as he lines up his wrist cannons and— 

—And there's a spot of white in front of the black. A high, trembling voice begging him to stop. A tiny, unmovable girl digging her heels into the slush, with tears beading over and rolling down her face.

And he can still take the shot. _He finally can,_ because the Bat isn't moving at all. He can, because this slim, wiry girl isn't blocking the Bat from him at all. 

But he _can't._

So he drops his wrists, and gasps, like a drowning man swallowing saltwater.

And he looks. Up, at the shadow, bearing down on him.

And he wonders. Because the Bat's getting more violent. Because he's heard the whispers about what might or might not have happened to the Joker's girl, and _maybe—_  

—Handcuffs. Just handcuffs, biting into Floyd's wrists, pinning the freezing metal rods of a wrought-iron gate against his back.

When the rumbling of engines and the ear-piercing sirens finally arrive and the cops leap out, the Bat lingers for just a moment.

He's there. And then he's gone.

Leaving the police to make sense of the scene he's left behind.

Of a gun with a filed-down serial number in a puddle of slush marred by footprints.

Of a slight, birdlike girl clinging to a man, pinned to an iron gate like an insect to a display case, whispering, _"I love you, I love you, I love you."_

Of the man who never misses, sobbing into her shoulder.

(Don't look at him.)


	14. nothing to be justified in

He’s been without her before.

That’s the first thing that slithers into the Joker’s mind, as soon as the filmy layer of fog wrapped around his brain clears.

As soon as he remembers slipping through the door in a soaked white suit and mud-caked socks. The _squelch-step, squelch-step, squelch-step_ of his gait. The stench of river clinging to his shoulders like an ostentatious fur coat, the green-tinted water streaming down into his eyes and warping the hallway into a slippery funhouse.

As soon as he realizes that there’s a space beside him that is empty and silent. A space he’s known before.

As soon as he realizes what— no — _who_ should be filling it.

As soon as the space deep in his chest, in the withered, forgotten place he can’t reach (let alone destroy), starts to burn.

Not even for any particular reason, as far as he knows, because she’s alive.

Of course she is. Fuck’s sake: she’s _Harley Quinn._

 _The one. The only. The infamous,_ he mouths, splaying his fingers and waving his arms at the invisible crowd. Now _there’s_ a line.

Harley, he has always suspected, is something similar to the Bat.

A creature not quite on the Joker’s level, but close.

(Closer than anyone else. Closer than he wants her to be, most of the time)

A creature that will simply survive all that happens to her.

Of _course_ she’s alive, he tells himself, rolling sluggishly off the couch and flopping onto the floor, the damp fabric of his suit squishing.

Of course she’s alive. It’s in her nature.

Harley always endures because it’s just what she does. Always picks herself up, always drives the invisible knife deeper into the wound, always leaves him with her high, tinny laughter ringing in his ears and the taste of bitter pennies leaking out from between his teeth and a swirling crown of cartoonish stars dancing in a wheel around his head.

Always returns, hours or days or weeks or months later. Or otherwise, he swallows the smoke in his mouth and retrieves her, because here’s the _kicker:_ that pull inside him? He’s starting to think that it works both ways.

(Which is a problem. One he really ought to do something about. Eventually)

She always comes back.

She _always_ does.

 _She always_ —

“Oh, _what?”_ he snarls as Vicki Vale’s face flickers into view on the television screen, in all her made-for-TV glory.

Don’t look at him like _that,_ Vic. It’s not like this is _his_ fault.

It’s just the principle of the thing. All a bunch of semantics, when it comes down to it. It isn’t personal, most of the time. It isn’t even exclusive to _them;_ he can’t even count the number of times the rest of the peanut gallery have cut and run halfway through a team effort.

(Let alone the number of times they’ve done the same)

(... Which is something they really should work on)

_(Note to self: Tell Jonny-Jonny to start researching team-building strategies)_

Keep up or die. It’s just how they go. It’s just how it’s always been. It’s just how things are.

It’s what he’d told her to expect if she’d follow him, all those years ago, and it’s what she’d promised to do. It’s what she usually _does._

It’s what she _should_ have done.

For the past year or so, she’s been very insistent about standing on her own, (And sure, sometimes the idea makes the underside of his skin skitter in ways he doesn’t like to think about, but he can’t deny that he’s intrigued by the results, let alone the _possibilities...)_ but she keeps forgetting that she can’t have it both ways. Harley needs to pull her own weight and watch her own back. If she wants to play with the big kids, she needs to bring her own toys and know what to do when it comes time to play by herself.

She should have known what he was going to do before he’d done it. She should have been ready. This isn’t the first time he’s declared a last-minute _every-man-for-himself,_ and it certainly won’t be the last.

(Because _really?_ All that time spent with the Cat and her scratching post, and Harley comes back _rusty_ when it comes to cutting and running? _Go figure)_

He shrugs, and snarls at the screen.

Because there she is, smiling in a photo superimposed in the background of Vicki Vale’s newest ratings bonanza. The scar that splits her eyebrow in two is, in this photo, a meticulously-stitched gash, still purple around the edges, still leaking blood through the seams, so…

A year ago. It must have been taken around a year ago. The last time she’d been arrested. Back when her hair had been shorter and straighter and bare of any dye, before she’d returned to curls of pink-and-blue swirling halfway down her back to recapture _the honeymoon days, Puddin’!_

(It's comments like these that really make him wonder how much she chooses to forget. How much his own mind plays with the past)

(It's comments like these that make the inside of his skull sting)

There she must be, he decides as he notes the grimy cell wall behind her, the doodles she’d carved into the stone with all the artistic finesse of a third grader over the course of her years in and out.

He can almost see the scene playing out, somewhere in the depths of good ol’ Arkham’s growling stone belly. Harley, pouting in her cell, twisting her multicolored pigtails around and around and around her pale, pale fingers. Impatiently waiting for him to come and sweep her off her feet.

But much, _much_ more importantly, here _he_ is, elbows deep in the middle of some _Very_ Important Business, swallowing the coals that have risen from the depths of his chest to the back of his throat, because he’s been without her before.

Because he’s dealt with this sensation many times over. At this point, you’d think he’d be a pro at pulling out the blade that she’d shoved between his ribs the second she’d clawed her way out of a certain chemical vat and into his life. That his tried-and-true method of dealing with the mess of congealed emotion, the way it spills out and gushes over anything and everything, is one that yields consistent results.

And sure, sometimes it does. Sometimes, all it takes is calmly and maturely kicking that mess under the bed and stubbornly refusing to acknowledge it’s existence until it takes on a life of it’s own.

Until it crawls out and starts lapping at his feet. Until it starts growing and growing until it’s deep enough to drown in.

… Fine. Sometimes it doesn’t. He’s working on that.

But wounds bleed out. He’ll drain himself dry again, and by then she’ll be back.

(Or she won’t. And, hey, silver lining: maybe it’ll finally close)

He has experience, dealing with this. He’ll live. He’s been without her before.

 _Break yourself out,_ he decides.

And then, as an afterthought, because somewhere in the city, there’s a green eco-freak who just hates the word: _Daddy’s busy._

The Joker returns to the Very Important Business of tearing into the couch cushions, because the damn remote’s _in here somewhere,_ and he can’t exactly ask Harley to find them, because _some_ body got herself arrested.

He swears, sometimes it’s like she’s doing this on _purpose._

 

* * *

 

Months.

It’s been fucking _months._

And… nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.

No dramatic riots-turned-breakouts in Arkham. No surprise awakenings in the middle of the night to the sweet, sweet caress of a baseball bat and a high, piercing voice chewing out the inside of his ear. No sudden strings of unexplained toy store burglaries. No explosion of mid-winter activity in Robinson Park. No mysterious hideout vandalization.

Nothing at all from her end.

And the wound hasn’t closed.

If anything, it’s festering, an edge of dirty green growing around it’s ragged edge. Infected, with something the Joker refuses to name because there’s _no fucking way._

It’s starting to affect him again. That’s the only explanation for why everything starts to unravel like this. For why the hideouts never seem to be in order, why he keeps tripping in the steadily-growing swamp of discarded garbage and clothing on the floor. Why he keeps seeing blinking targets flashing over the heads of his followers, and they always seem the most irresistible when her name floats out of their mouths. Why it’s been months and he still hasn’t chosen a new club as a front. Why there’s a new kind of pain— a white one, like needles made of starlight— that’s drilling into his brain, that won’t go away no matter what vice he throws himself into.

(Oh, he _knows_ why, but he doesn’t quite believe it yet)

It doesn’t heal, he’s starting to think. The only way to get rid of it is to plunge that knife right back in and twist it deeper still, just in case.

And for that, he needs her, because she’s the one holding it.

But she’s not coming, as stubborn as she was back in the days when he was actively trying to kill her.

(Because, _listen,_ all those accidents? All those flares of his temper? Those, ladies and gentlemen, are an entirely _different_ matter, and really shouldn’t be lumped in with the active attempts on her life. After all, if Harley’s going to die by his hand, he’s going to make a _production_ out of it, because she deserves nothing less than a spectacle. If he ever gets around to it. You never know)

And even then, he never really expects he’ll succeed. It’s just… force of habit. A dog chasing a car. Not because it wants to _do_ anything with it, not because it expects to _catch_ the damn thing. But because dogs are descended from wolves, and there are some instincts that are too deep-rooted to breed away. 

(After all, what would he even _do_ if he succeeded?)

And she’s being alarmingly quiet about all of this. A kind of quiet that seeps into the spaces between his thoughts and crowds them with staticky unknowns. A kind of quiet that, paradoxically, roars louder than anything he's ever heard.

For all he knows, she’s roped Ed and Jon into hosting another party in the common room.

For all he knows, she’s high as a kite on whatever Arkham’s dosing her with, because there’s no reliable way to predict the reactions of a woman who’s been both dosed and doused with Gotham’s two most potent chemical mystery mixes.

For all he knows, she’s been in solitary, listening to her own words bounce off the walls and roll around on the inside of her skull for months.

For all he knows, she’s lost interest in him completely—

 

* * *

 

When the red-tinted haze clears, he’s pacing like a caged lion in an empty concrete cell as Jonny-Jonny (polished, punctual and professional as only he can be in the middle of a mass asylum breakout) waits just outside the door, explaining to him with all the efficiency and delicacy of a heart surgeon that she’s—

_Not here, and the guys goin' through the records office're sayin' she never has been. Not since the last time you two broke out together._

Not here. Never has been. Not since the last time. Not since last year.

So she’s somewhere. Somewhere in Gotham, laying low. Playing hard to get.

... Fine. He’ll oblige the way he usually does.

He searches his memory for every place Harley’s been when they’ve been on a break, everywhere she’d go or be interested in— Blackgate, Amusement Mile, Ace, Robinson Park, the Zoo, the Lounge, Riddler’s basement, Sionis’s fight clubs, Scarecrow’s factory, Catwoman’s penthouses (or at least, all the ones they can find), the unflooded sewer tunnels, that roller-derby gay bar she’s really taken a liking to, Wesker’s tombstone, the loudest warehouse parties, the toy emporium that sells the eight-foot-tall teddy bears— and lists each of them as they make their way out. 

And then, when the smoggy Gotham air wraps around him like the embrace of an old friend, he gives the order.

 

* * *

 

From what he can tell, it's chaos.

Chaos on a scale he hasn't borne witness to in years.

Chaos he should be obsessing over. Chaos he should be reveling in.

Instead, he lead a camping trip from hell to find the plant fortress at the heart of Robinson, which as it turns out, is empty. Because _apparently,_ the weed whacko's been out of the city for months now, and though the jury's out on exactly where she's gone, _everyone_ knows she left on her own, and _no one_ thought to tell him.

(There'd been a room full of dead informers to pay for that revelation)

Instead, he stumbles out a week later, alone and covered in stinging gashes from a bloodthirsty sentient thorn bush, and knocks Poison Ivy's domain off his list.

Instead, he starts checking every warehouse, every motel room, every penthouse they've stayed in over the years.

Instead, he's here, standing in the doorway of a high-rise apartment he hasn't seen in months. Not since they'd left for the Wild Card months ago.

No one's been here since then.

Not any of the henchmen, because as a rule, the lower-level goons never know where their leaders sleep, and those privileged enough to have the information are generally smart enough to know that trespassing comes under penalty of death.

Not him, because he just didn't feel like it.

Not her, because something must have stopped her from getting here.

Because there's _something,_ the clouded wisp of a memory, of an insistent need of hers to get back to this place in particular. 

Because there's something here that she wants him to see.

And no one's been here since That Night, so whatever it is still—

—There.

Right there. Carefully placed on the foot of their immaculately-made bed.

It's the immaculately-made bed that catches his attention (because their beds are all uniform in their messiness. Every single one is a tangled nest of sheets, scraps of clothing and the odd stuffed animal or two).

It's the box that holds it.

Small, rectangular, jet-black, topped with a red silk ribbon tied in a perfect bow.

There's a weight to it, a promise of permanence, a warning bell that starts to ring in the back of his mind telling him that if he searches his memories hard enough and reads into every implication, he'll find that he already knows what's there. That if he sees what's inside, there will be no unseeing it. 

So of course, he rips the thing open and—

 

* * *

 

The implication isn’t lost on him, that the night the Batmobile appears with shiny new guns attached to the hood is nearly one year to the day that Harley had vanished.

It’s possible that in that stretch of just over a year, in that time when the Batman seared his symbol into the bodies of criminals and collateral damage begun slipping further and further from his mind, in that time when all they’d had to do was sit back and _watch,_ he’d done it.

Everyone has to start somewhere, after all.

He knows what triggered the change. They all do. It had been a daily subject of conversation around trays of gray, lumpy matter given the ambiguous label of ‘cafeteria food’ in the asylum, the few times he’d been allowed out of his cell. Probably still is.

It’s common knowledge at this point: the appearance of the Boy Scout across the bay had kicked the Batman’s mid-life crisis into gear, and so they’d started a betting pool.

The million-dollar question?

How long?

How long, until he takes the final leap? Until he lands himself in a cell to Pammy’s left or Ozzie’s right? Until the joke finally pays off?

_(Until he kills one of us?)_

Because there has to have been a first. A first instance, when he’d decided that his golden rule wasn’t worth keeping any longer.

It should excite him, but instead, something cold and heavy settles in his chest.

He stares at the four tiny scraps of clothing spread out in front of him, and really starts to _wonder._

* * *

 

The Joker is not capable of regret.

Oh, he can acknowledge when he's made a mistake. He can _definitely_ acknowledge when he's fucked up. He's crazy, but he isn't naive. Fucking up is a part of his brand. One of the greatest components of comedy, after all, is the art of turning your fuck-ups into something worth seeing.

But regret is something different. Regret is the slow, bitter scraping of teeth in the back of the brain, the creeping realization that what's been done can't be undone, the light-bulb's flicker of _you've missed something vital_ only arriving after the consequences are barreling towards you like an oncoming train.

And the Joker is not capable of regret.

That’s what he’s always thought. But then again, there are many things he shouldn’t _—_ can’t _—i_ _sn’t meant to_ feel.

(Like a warm, thick clenching deep in his gut, the stirring of something primal and almost forgotten when the layered scent of bubblegum perfume and chemical waste floats down the hallway in her wake, when a flash of bleached skin catches his eye. A heavy, dense little creature, chewing on his insides, chasing away all other thoughts, telling him to _keep her closer-closer-closer-until—)_

(Like the icy, irrational chill that settles on his shoulders when the three of them are in the same place at the same time, when their common denominator is enough to force them to sit quietly side by side and get along in a way they hadn’t since long before Harley had even existed; in the shape of a climbing vine, it slithers into his ear, telling him to keep his eye out, or he’ll look away and what’s _his_ will become _hers)_

(Like the emptiness in the hollow of his chest where laughter goes to die, where silence lives and breeds and spreads through his limbs, rendering them stiff and corpse-like, where it crawls into his mind and sends him wandering listlessly from room to room, telling him that the only cure for the growing, hungry void is the attention of an audience of one)

And yet.

And yet, with her, he just might.

Harley, he’s always suspected, is something similar to the Bat.

A creature not quite on the Joker’s level, but close.

(Closer than anyone else. Closer than he wants her to be. Close enough to make him feel)

(Close enough to be an exception)

But unlike the Batman, she’d carried herself with an uncanny sense of self-awareness. She looked at the rotten, dying world with clear eyes, saw it for what it truly is, and leapt head-first into his quest to enlighten everyone who hasn’t yet done the same. She slid her hand into his and let him anchor her as she leaned over the edge of life itself and filled oblivion with vicious laughter that complimented his own.

Unlike the Batman, unlike _everyone,_ it seems, she _understoo_ _—_

_Understands._

She _understands._

No past-tense. Not yet. Not until he knows for sure.

Not until there’s a body laid out on a slab in front of him, until the morgues and mortuaries he's funneling his resources into yield some kind of conclusive result, and he _knows for sure._

Because Harley is a creature that simply survives all that happens to her, and this irrational, invasive thought that’s been fluttering like a moth in his head for months is just that: irrational and invasive.

She's out there, somewhere. Of course she is. She's just not _here._

So _where is she?_


End file.
